How to format your references using the Library and Information Science Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Library and Information Science Research. 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

Kreeger, K. (2003). Seeking strength in numbers. Nature, 421(6919), 194.

A journal article with 2 authors

Milo, R., & Last, R. L. (2012). Achieving diversity in the face of constraints: lessons from metabolism. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6089), 1663–1667.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li, H., Li, W. X., & Ding, S. W. (2002). Induction and suppression of RNA silencing by an animal virus. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5571), 1319–1321.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Han, Z., Tang, Z., Shen, S., Zhao, B., Zheng, G., & Yang, J. (2014). Strengthening of graphene aerogels with tunable density and high adsorption capacity towards Pb2+. Scientific Reports, 4, 5025.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Norris, L. (2014). Transplant Administration. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Spath, D., & Fähnrich, K.-P. (Eds.). (2007). Advances in Services Innovations. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Krasińska, M., & Krasiński, Z. A. (2013). Aspects of the Genetics of European Bison. In Z. A. Krasiński (Ed.), European Bison: The Nature Monograph (pp. 35–40). 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 Library and Information Science Research.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2017, May 15). A Supernova 50 Light-Years Away Could Start A Mass Extinction. 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. (1996). Tax Systems Modernization: Management and Technical Weaknesses Must Be Overcome To Achieve Success (T-AIMD-96-75). 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

Kemp, L. S. (2013). Perspective processing in language comprehension: Embodied efffects depend on the pronoun [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

Shpigel, B. (2016, October 27). Edmonton’s Abuzz? Think Prodigy. New York Times, B9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kreeger, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kreeger, 2003; Milo & Last, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Milo & Last, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Han et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Library and Information Science Research
Abbreviation	Libr. Inf. Sci. Res.
ISSN (print)	0740-8188
Scope	Information Systems Library and Information Sciences