How to format your references using the Journal of Information Literacy citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Information Literacy (JIL). 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

Macilwain, C. (2014). Wanted: Fraud-buster with political antennae. Nature, 507(7492), 275.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frisch, R. L., & Rosenberg, S. M. (2011). Microbiology. Antibiotic resistance, not shaken or stirred. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6050), 1713–1714.

A journal article with 3 authors

Turner, S., Evans, P., & Hawkesworth, C. (2001). Ultrafast source-to-surface movement of melt at island arcs from 226Ra-230Th systematics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 292(5520), 1363–1366.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Trampert, J., Deschamps, F., Resovsky, J., & Yuen, D. (2004). Probabilistic tomography maps chemical heterogeneities throughout the lower mantle. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5697), 853–856.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alexander, M., & Walkenbach, J. (2010). Excel® Dashboards & Reports. Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Ehrenfeld, J. M., Urman, R. D., & Segal, S. (Eds.). (2010). Anesthesia Student Survival Guide: A Case-Based Approach. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lu, T., Vo, B., Nguyen, H. T., & Hong, T.-P. (2014). A New Method for Mining High Average Utility Itemsets. In K. Saeed & V. Snášel (Eds.), Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management: 13th IFIP TC8 International Conference, CISIM 2014, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, November 5-7, 2014. Proceedings (pp. 33–42). Springer.

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 Journal of Information Literacy.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015, November 13). What On Earth Are These Mysterious “Space Balls” That Keep Landing In A Village In Spain? IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/third-mysterious-orb-space-junk-found-spain/

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. (1996). General Government Information Systems Issue Area: Active Assignments (AA-96-28(2)). 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

Alai, N. L. (2017). Development of a Sport-Specific Curriculum Addressing Selfefficacy to Optimize Carbohydrate and Calorie Intake Among Male and Female High School Cross-Country Runners [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Herrington, N. (2017, July 28). When You’re Dope And You Know It. New York Times, C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Frisch & Rosenberg, 2011; Macilwain, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Frisch & Rosenberg, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Trampert et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Information Literacy
ISSN (online)	1750-5968
Scope