How to format your references using the International Journal of Science Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Science Education. 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

Socha, J. J. (2002). Gliding flight in the paradise tree snake. Nature, 418(6898), 603–604.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cuffey, K. M., & Vimeux, F. (2001). Covariation of carbon dioxide and temperature from the Vostok ice core after deuterium-excess correction. Nature, 412(6846), 523–527.

A journal article with 3 authors

Clem, R. L., Celikel, T., & Barth, A. L. (2008). Ongoing in vivo experience triggers synaptic metaplasticity in the neocortex. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5859), 101–104.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Tanaka, M., Collins, S. R., Toyama, B. H., & Weissman, J. S. (2006). The physical basis of how prion conformations determine strain phenotypes. Nature, 442(7102), 585–589.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Yakir, B. (2013). Extremes in Random Fields: A Theory and its Applications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Nazarpour, S. (Ed.). (2013). Thin Films and Coatings in Biology. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Frenkel, E., & Gaitsgory, D. (2010). Weyl Modules and Opers without Monodromy. In Ö. Ceyhan, Y. I. Manin, & M. Marcolli (Eds.), Arithmetic and Geometry Around Quantization (pp. 101–121). Birkhäuser.

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 Science Education.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2016, September 16). Maternal Deaths Worldwide Have Almost Halved In 25 Years. IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. (2014). James Webb Space Telescope: Project Facing Increased Schedule Risk with Significant Work Remaining (GAO-15-100). 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

Batson, G. (2008). Head Start and at -risk students: Perceptions of administrators, practitioners, and parents [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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

Sophia Kishkovsky; Compiled by. (2008, October 17). Russian Billionaires Still Like Valuable Art. New York Times, C4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Socha, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Cuffey & Vimeux, 2001; Socha, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Cuffey & Vimeux, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Tanaka et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Science Education
Abbreviation	Int. J. Sci. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0950-0693
ISSN (online)	1464-5289
Scope	Education