How to format your references using the Writing Systems Research citation style

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

Brockhurst, M. (2010). Journal club. An evolutionary biologist marvels at how species evolve to help each other out. Nature, 464(7288), 469.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schindler, D. E., & Hilborn, R. (2015). Sustainability. Prediction, precaution, and policy under global change. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6225), 953–954.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bußhardt, P., Kunze, D., & Gorb, S. N. (2014). Interlocking-based attachment during locomotion in the beetle Pachnoda marginata (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae). Scientific Reports, 4, 6998.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Intlekofer, A. M., Shih, A. H., Wang, B., Nazir, A., Rustenburg, A. S., Albanese, S. K., Patel, M., Famulare, C., Correa, F. M., Takemoto, N., Durani, V., Liu, H., Taylor, J., Farnoud, N., Papaemmanuil, E., Cross, J. R., Tallman, M. S., Arcila, M. E., Roshal, M., … Stein, E. M. (2018). Acquired resistance to IDH inhibition through trans or cis dimer-interface mutations. Nature, 559(7712), 125–129.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gerardi, M. H. (2010). Troubleshooting the Sequencing Batch Reactor. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Fiala, J., Kratochvíl, J., & Miller, M. (Eds.). (2009). Combinatorial Algorithms: 20th International Workshop, IWOCA 2009, Hradec nad Moravicí, Czech Republic, June 28–July 2, 2009, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 5874). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lust, W. D., Zechel, J., & Pundik, S. (2009). Experimental Ischemia: Summary of Metabolic Encephalopathy. In D. W. McCandless (Ed.), Metabolic Encephalopathy (pp. 41–67). 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 Writing Systems Research.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2017, March 29). Eleven Elephants Rescued From Muddy Bomb Crater Doom. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/eleven-elephants-rescued-from-muddy-bomb-crater-doom/

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. (2000). Telecommunications: Update on State-Level Cramming Complaints and Enforcement Actions (RCED-00-68). 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

Little, J. L. (2014). The effects of a financial literacy intervention on teachers’ financial literacy, awareness, and advocacy [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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

Yeginsu, C., & Rao, P. S. (2017, August 17). Malala Yousafzai, Girls’ Advocate Shot by Taliban, Has Been Accepted to Oxford. New York Times, A4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brockhurst, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Brockhurst, 2010; Schindler & Hilborn, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Schindler & Hilborn, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Intlekofer et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Writing Systems Research
Abbreviation	Writ. Syst. Res.
ISSN (print)	1758-6801
ISSN (online)	1758-681X
Scope	Language and Linguistics Linguistics and Language