How to format your references using the Metacognition and Learning citation style

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

Kawaler, S. D. (2003). Astronomy. Taking the pulse of a massive star. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5627), 1885–1886.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jordan, K. D., & Johnson, M. A. (2010). Chemistry. Downsizing the hydrated electron’s lair. Science (New York, N.Y.), 329(5987), 42–43.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wilkinson, J. J., Simmons, S. F., & Stoffell, B. (2013). How metalliferous brines line Mexican epithermal veins with silver. Scientific reports, 3, 2057.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Bhargava, V., Ko, P., Willems, E., Mercola, M., & Subramaniam, S. (2013). Quantitative transcriptomics using designed primer-based amplification. Scientific reports, 3, 1740.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sanchez, A., & Carro, B. (2017). Digital Services in the 21st Century. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lirkov, I., Margenov, S., & Waśniewski, J. (Eds.). (2010). Large-Scale Scientific Computing: 7th International Conference, LSSC 2009, Sozopol, Bulgaria, June 4-8, 2009. Revised Papers (Vol. 5910). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Kleinbaum, D. G., & Klein, M. (2012). Evaluating the Proportional Hazards Assumption. In M. Klein (Ed.), Survival Analysis: A Self-Learning Text, Third Edition (pp. 161–200). New York, NY: 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 Metacognition and Learning.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2016, May 15). Beekeepers In The U.S. Lost 44% Of Their Colonies Last Year. IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (2009). Public Transportation: Better Data Needed to Assess Length of New Starts Process, and Options Exist to Expedite Project Development (No. GAO-09-784). 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

Graham, H. H. (2010). Leadership as co-influencing: A heuristic narrative study of dynamic co-emergence within the leadership relationship (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Grynbaum, M. M. (2017, June 9). CNN Severs Its Ties With a Host After His Vulgar Criticism of Trump. New York Times, p. B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kawaler 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Jordan and Johnson 2010; Kawaler 2003).

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

Two authors: (Jordan and Johnson 2010)
Three or more authors: (Bhargava et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Metacognition and Learning
Abbreviation	Metacogn. Learn.
ISSN (print)	1556-1623
ISSN (online)	1556-1631
Scope	Education