How to format your references using the MIS Quarterly citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for MIS Quarterly (MISQ). 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

Gravitz, L. 2014. “Therapy: This Time It’s Personal,” Nature (509:7502), pp. S52-4.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cooper, M. A., and Shlaes, D. 2011. “Fix the Antibiotics Pipeline,” Nature (472:7341), p. 32.

A journal article with 3 authors

Patt, A. G., Ogallo, L., and Hellmuth, M. 2007. “Sustainability. Learning from 10 Years of Climate Outlook Forums in Africa,” Science (New York, N.Y.) (318:5847), pp. 49–50.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Bertoldi, F., Altenhoff, W., Weiss, A., Menten, K. M., and Thum, C. 2006. “The Trans-Neptunian Object UB313 Is Larger than Pluto,” Nature (439:7076), pp. 563–564.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kwartler, T. 2017. Text Mining in Practice with R, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Václavíková, M., Vitale, K., Gallios, G. P., and Ivaničová, L. (eds.). 2010. Water Treatment Technologies for the Removal of High-Toxicity Pollutants, NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

von Thomsen, C., Gallup, L., and Llorente, A. M. 2008. “Intellectual Abilities: Theoretical and Applied Assessment Considerations,” in Principles of Neuropsychological Assessment with Hispanics: Theoretical Foundations and Clinical Practice, Issues of Diversity in Clinical Neuropsychology, A. M. Llorente (ed.), New York, NY: Springer, pp. 57–77.

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 MIS Quarterly.

Blog post

Davis, J. 2015. “Scientists Develop Robo-Whiskers That Mimic How Seals Sense,” IFLScience, IFLScience, August 6. (, accessed October 30, 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. 1978. “The Challenge of Career Adaptation and Renewal,” No. 106027, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 28.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Desam, J. R. 2017. “Effective Nodal Placement in Overlay Networks Using Complexity Theory,” Doctoral dissertation, Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: 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

Khodarkovsky, M. 2017. “Russia’s Age-Old Identity Question,” New York Times, p. 0.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gravitz 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Cooper and Shlaes 2011; Gravitz 2014).

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

Two authors: (Cooper and Shlaes 2011)
Three or more authors: (Bertoldi et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	MIS Quarterly
Abbreviation	MIS Q
ISSN (print)	0276-7783
Scope	Management Information Systems Computer Science Applications Information Systems Information Systems and Management