How to format your references using the Thinking Skills and Creativity citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Thinking Skills and Creativity. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Croce, R. (2015). Structural biology. A close view of photosystem I. Science (New York, N.Y.), 348(6238), 970–971.
A journal article with 2 authors
Russo, C. J., & Passmore, L. A. (2014). Electron microscopy: Ultrastable gold substrates for electron cryomicroscopy. Science (New York, N.Y.), 346(6215), 1377–1380.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kaminski, J., Call, J., & Fischer, J. (2004). Word learning in a domestic dog: evidence for “fast mapping.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5677), 1682–1683.
A journal article with 21 or more authors
Sudarsan, N., Hammond, M. C., Block, K. F., Welz, R., Barrick, J. E., Roth, A., & Breaker, R. R. (2006). Tandem riboswitch architectures exhibit complex gene control functions. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314(5797), 300–304.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Molloy, M., & Larner, W. (2013). Fashioning Globalisation. John Wiley & Sons.
An edited book
Meersman, R., Panetto, H., Dillon, T., Eder, J., Bellahsene, Z., Ritter, N., Leenheer, P. D., & Dou, D. (Eds.). (2013). On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2013 Conferences: Confederated International Conferences: CoopIS, DOA-Trusted Cloud, and ODBASE 2013, Graz, Austria, September 9-13, 2013. Proceedings (Vol. 8185). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Dietrich, F., Maaß, J., Bier, C., Pietsch, I., Raatz, A., & Hesselbach, J. (2011). Detection and Avoidance of Singularities in Parallel Kinematic Machines. In D. Schütz & F. M. Wahl (Eds.), Robotic Systems for Handling and Assembly (pp. 77–92). 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 Thinking Skills and Creativity.

Blog post
O`Callaghan, J. (2016, November 29). Japanese Skating Rink Shuts After Dead Frozen Fish Cause Public Outcry. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/japanese-ice-rink-frozen-dead-fish/

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. (1991). Federal Research: SEMATECH’s Efforts to Develop and Transfer Manufacturing Technology (RCED-91-139FS). 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
Garatli, A. A. (2014). What are the necessary skills for leading an online business in Saudi Arabia? [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine University.

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
Crow, K. (2002, March 10). Is Anybody Regulating Cellphone Antennas? New York Times, 145.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Croce, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Croce, 2015; Russo & Passmore, 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Russo & Passmore, 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Sudarsan et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal titleThinking Skills and Creativity
AbbreviationThink. Skills Creat.
ISSN (print)1871-1871
ScopeEducation

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