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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of STEM 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Jan, E. (2015). Molecular biology: signals across domains of life. Nature, 519(7541), 40–41.

A journal article with 2 authors

Poulet, J. F. A., & Hedwig, B. (2006). The cellular basis of a corollary discharge. Science (New York, N.Y.), 311(5760), 518–522.

A journal article with 3 authors

Conroy, C., van Dokkum, P. G., & Choi, J. (2015). Ubiquitous time variability of integrated stellar populations. Nature, 527(7579), 488–491.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Xu, X., Zhou, Z., Wang, X., Kuang, X., Zhang, F., & Du, X. (2003). Four-winged dinosaurs from China. Nature, 421(6921), 335–340.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Binnie, C. (2016). Linux Server Security. Indianapolis, IN, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Seed, M. P., & Walsh, D. A. (Eds.). (2008). Angiogenesis in Inflammation: Mechanisms and Clinical Correlates. Basel: Birkhäuser.

A chapter in an edited book

James, J. W. (2009). Discussion. In J. van der Werf, H.-U. Graser, R. Frankham, & C. Gondro (Eds.), Adaptation and Fitness in Animal Populations: Evolutionary and Breeding Perspectives on Genetic Resource Management (pp. 53–55). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 STEM Education.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2016, April 27). Pluto’s Halo Craters Revealed In New Images. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/pluto-has-haloed-craters/. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (2008). Space Acquisitions: Major Space Programs Still at Risk for Cost and Schedule Increases (No. GAO-08-552T). 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

Baldasaro, R. E. (2013). Person level analysis in latent growth curve models (Doctoral dissertation). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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

Feeney, K. (2010, February 28). Oreos in the (Pancake) Mix. New York Times, p. NJ10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Jan 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Jan 2015; Poulet and Hedwig 2006).

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

Two authors: (Poulet and Hedwig 2006)
Three or more authors: (Xu et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of STEM Education
ISSN (online)	2196-7822
Scope