How to format your references using the JCOM: Journal of Science Communication citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for JCOM: Journal of Science Communication. 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

Weitz, D. A. (2009). ‘Materials science. Unjamming a polymer glass’. Science (New York, N.Y.) 323 (5911), pp. 214–215.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rutherford, A. W. and Boussac, A. (2004). ‘Biochemistry. Water photolysis in biology’. Science (New York, N.Y.) 303 (5665), pp. 1782–1784.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mohn, F., Handler, D. and Brennecke, J. (2015). ‘Noncoding RNA. piRNA-guided slicing specifies transcripts for Zucchini-dependent, phased piRNA biogenesis’. Science (New York, N.Y.) 348 (6236), pp. 812–817.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Weill, M., Lutfalla, G., Mogensen, K., Chandre, F., Berthomieu, A., Berticat, C., et al. (2003). ‘Comparative genomics: Insecticide resistance in mosquito vectors’. Nature 423 (6936), pp. 136–137.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ratliff, T. A. (2005). The Laboratory Quality Assurance System. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Hota, C. and Srimani, P. K. (Eds.). (2013). Distributed Computing and Internet Technology: 9th International Conference, ICDCIT 2013, Bhubaneswar, India, February 5-8, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Futer, D., Kalfagianni, E. and Purcell, J. (2013). I-Bundles and Essential Product Disks. In: Guts of Surfaces and the Colored Jones Polynomial. Ed. by E. Kalfagianni and J. Purcell. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 53–72.

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 JCOM: Journal of Science Communication.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2016, September 7). Here’s What It Takes To Raise Seriously Smart Kids, According To A 45-Year-Long Study. Retrieved 30 October 2018, from IFLScience website: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/heres-what-it-takes-to-raise-seriously-smart-kids-according-to-a-45yearlong-study/

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. (1974). Why Performance of Automatic Voice Network (AUTOVON) Service Needs Improvement (No. B-169857). 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

Lin, H.-C. (2013). Depression screening in ambulatory care (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Wagner, J. (2017, July 10). Once ‘All In,’ Mets Are More Than 10 Games Out at the All-Star Break. New York Times p. D5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	JCOM: Journal of Science Communication
ISSN (online)	1824-2049
Scope