How to format your references using the International Journal of General Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of General Systems. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Porto, J. V. 2013. “Physics. Cold-Atom Magnetism.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 340 (6138): 1297–1298.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove, and John F. Bruno. 2010. “The Impact of Climate Change on the World’s Marine Ecosystems.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 328 (5985): 1523–1528.

A journal article with 3 authors

Weber, W., S. Riesen, and H. C. Siegmann. 2001. “Magnetization Precession by Hot Spin Injection.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 291 (5506): 1015–1018.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Takayama, Tomohiro, Alexander Yaresko, Akiyo Matsumoto, Jürgen Nuss, Kenji Ishii, Masahiro Yoshida, Junichiro Mizuki, and Hidenori Takagi. 2014. “Spin-Orbit Coupling Induced Semi-Metallic State in the 1/3 Hole-Doped Hyper-Kagome Na3Ir3O8.” Scientific Reports 4 (October 2014): 6818.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Chapman, Brian R., and Eric G. Bolen. 2015. Ecology of North America. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Näthke, Inke S., and Brooke M. McCartney, eds. 2009. APC Proteins. Vol. 656. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Xu, Ke, and Susumu Terakawa. 2013. “Myelin Sheath with a New Type of Fine Structure Found in the Nervous System of Penaeus Shrimp, an Invertebrate.” In Myelinated Fibers and Saltatory Conduction in the Shrimp: The Fastest Impulse Conduction in the Animal Kingdom, edited by Susumu Terakawa, 35–45. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for International Journal of General Systems.

Blog post

Hamilton, Kristy. 2015. “Blood Test Could Predict Risk For Breast Cancer Relapse Months In Advance.” IFLScience, IFLScience, August 28. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/blood-test-may-predict-risk-breast-cancer-relapse-months-ahead/.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. 1985. Status of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Modernization Program. NSIAD-85-78. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Ponti, Carla M. 2010. “The Musical Representation of Asian Characters in the Musicals of Richard Rodgers.” Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Hubbard, Ben. 2016. “Doctor-Turned-Artist Reveals Holy City’s Hidden Side.” New York Times, December 2, 2016.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Porto 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Porto 2013; Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno 2010).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno 2010)
Three authors: (Weber, Riesen, and Siegmann 2001)
4 or more authors: (Takayama et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of General Systems
Abbreviation	Int. J. Gen. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0308-1079
ISSN (online)	1563-5104
Scope	Computer Science Applications Information Systems Control and Systems Engineering Modelling and Simulation Theoretical Computer Science