How to format your references using the IT Professional citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IT Professional. 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

[1]

F. Albarède, “Geophysics. Helium feels the heat in Earth’s mantle,” Science, vol. 310, no. 5755, pp. 1777–1778, Dec. 2005.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J. S. Reader and G. F. Joyce, “A ribozyme composed of only two different nucleotides,” Nature, vol. 420, no. 6917, pp. 841–844, 2002.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. I. Kingon, J. P. Maria, and S. K. Streiffer, “Alternative dielectrics to silicon dioxide for memory and logic devices,” Nature, vol. 406, no. 6799, pp. 1032–1038, Aug. 2000.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A. W. Holleitner, R. H. Blick, A. K. Huttel, K. Eberl, and J. P. Kotthaus, “Probing and controlling the bonds of an artificial molecule,” Science, vol. 297, no. 5578, pp. 70–72, Jul. 2002.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M. Halloran and C. Thies, The Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012.

An edited book

[1]

C. Williams, Ed., Social Work and the City: Urban Themes in 21st-Century Social Work. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

E. Y. Cheu, S. K. Ng, and C. Quek, “Enhancing Decision Support System with Neural Fuzzy Model and Simple Model Visualizations,” in Handbook on Decision Making: Vol 1: Techniques and Applications, L. C. Jain and C. P. Lim, Eds., in Intelligent Systems Reference Library. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2010, pp. 85–116.

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 IT Professional.

Blog post

[1]

J. Fang, “Scientists Have Sequenced the Coffee Genome!,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-have-sequenced-coffee-genome/

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, “Offshoring in Six Human Services Programs: Offshoring Occurs in Most States, Primarily in Customer Service and Software Development,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-06-342, Mar. 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. L. D’Ambrosio, “Perspectives on the Geomorphic Evolution and Ecology of Modified Channels and Two-Stage Ditches in the Agriculturally-Dominated Midwestern United States,” Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2013.

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

[1]

L. Greenhouse, “Justices Stay Execution, A Signal to Lower Courts,” New York Times, p. A1, Oct. 31, 2007.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1], [2].
This sentence cites four references [1], [2], [3], [4].

About the journal

Full journal title	IT Professional
Abbreviation	IT Prof.
ISSN (print)	1520-9202
Scope	Computer Science Applications Hardware and Architecture Software