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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Vocations 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

Postle, K. (2002). Close before opening. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5560), 1658–1659.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tan, L. W. H., & Subramaniam, R. (2002). Education. Science and the student entrepreneur. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5598), 1556.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yoshida, A., Yoneda-Kato, N., & Kato, J.-Y. (2013). CSN5 specifically interacts with CDK2 and controls senescence in a cytoplasmic cyclin E-mediated manner. Scientific reports, 3, 1054.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Sriraman, S., Agarwal, S., Aydil, E. S., & Maroudas, D. (2002). Mechanism of hydrogen-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon. Nature, 418(6893), 62–65.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Simon, M. K., Lee, D., Martin, W. L., Tsou, H., & Yan, T.-Y. (2005). Bandwidth-Efficient Digital Modulation with Application to Deep Space Communications. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Jacobson, S. (2008). Neuroanatomy for the Neuroscientist. (E. M. Marcus, Ed.). Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Savin-Baden, M., & Wimpenny, K. (2014). What are Arts-Related Methods? In K. Wimpenny (Ed.), A Practical Guide to Arts-related Research (pp. 45–62). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 Vocations and Learning.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015, October 14). Brain Monitor Ensures You Aren’t Aware While Under Anesthetic. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/brain-monitor-ensures-you-arent-aware-under-anesthetic/. 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. (1990). Information Technology: A Model to Help Managers Decrease Acquisition Risks (No. IMTEC-8.1.6). 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

Aggarwal, E. (2012). South Asian women’s attitudes toward help-seeking behaviors (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

McKINLEY, J. C., Jr. (2017, March 8). Not Guilty, at Least Here, Lawyer Says. New York Times, p. A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Postle 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Postle 2002; Tan and Subramaniam 2002).

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

Two authors: (Tan and Subramaniam 2002)
Three or more authors: (Sriraman et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Vocations and Learning
Abbreviation	Vocat. Learn.
ISSN (print)	1874-785X
ISSN (online)	1874-7868
Scope	Education