| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Research and Review Articles - Formatting

Page history last edited by heather-healy@... 10 months, 3 weeks ago

Introduction

 

This page provides guidance on the formatting and style of manuscripts submitted as Articles.

Use the Table of Page Contents below to locate the section that you require.

 

Table of Page Contents


Writing Style for all Manuscripts

 

Active vs. Passive Voice

Avoid the passive voice; use active verbs as these are generally more direct and clear. 

Change those instances in which passive voice causes a sentence to be awkward or confusing.

For further explanation or examples, see http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/pasvoiceterm.htm 

 

Avoid the use of “and/or”; usually “or” will be sufficient.

 

Avoid the use of “etc.”; prefer “and others.”

 

Don’t use “listserv” generically as it is a trade name; prefer “electronic mailing list.”

 
See complete list of preferred terms in the Appendix to this manual.

 

Font, Margins, Page Numbers 

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
 

Font

Times New Roman,

12-point font,

single-space

 

Margins

1-in./2.54 cm margins,

all 4 sides

 

Page numbers

Right-justified at the top of the page

 
 Back to Table of Contents   

 

Details of Article - Title, Author, Dates, Copyright, Data Availability, Abstract

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE

Mss. Section Title

Italics

e.g.  Research Article or Review Article

(Please do not use Article by itself.) 

Title 

Bold;

all significant words capitalized;

left justified

e.g. An Analysis of Virtual Reference Questions in a College Library
Author/co-author list  

Full name,

position/title,

library name,

institutional name (if needed for clarification),

location (city, state/province, country), and

email address.

 

 

Use full spelling of state/province and country name (i.e., United Kingdom and United States of America).  

Denise Koufogiannakis

Collections & Acquisitions Coordinator

University of Alberta Libraries

University of Alberta (redundant; do not use)

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Email: denise.koufogiannakis@ualberta.ca

 

 

Heather Pretty

Cataloguing Librarian

Queen Elizabeth II Library

Memorial University of Newfoundland

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Email: hjpretty@mun.ca

 

If the author has two different titles at two different institutions, use two separate lines and include library/institution name in the same line with the title. Use the location information associated with the email address.

Marion Made-Up

Librarian, Vaughan Memorial Library, Acadia University

Doctoral Student, Dalhousie University

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada

Email: librarian@acadiau.ca
Received/accepted date 

Placed above Creative Commons statement.

 

Received: in bold font, space for five tabs,

Accepted: bold font 

 

 

Received: 4 July 2008

Accepted: 14 Aug. 2008

Date format:  dd/month/year

For all dates - this area and throughout the manuscript, use month abbreviations as listed in the Appendix A to this manual.

Copyright Statement

(Creative Commons)

Inserted above abstract (or data availability statement if one is included) with current year and author's surname.

 

10 point font, not bold

 2014 Saleh, Ratajeski, and Bertolet. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.
Data Availability

Articles: Include citation for the dataset (if authors have submitted one with their research or review article). Use the following citation format:

Author, A. A., & Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dataset (V1) [items included]. Publisher. DOI

 

The data version number is included in parentheses after the title and the items included (e.g., code book, survey instrument) are listed in brackets after the version number. Many data sets will be deposited by EBLIP in UAL Dataverse unless authors have already submitted it to another repository.

Data Availability: Hoffman, K., Berg, S., & Koufogiannakis, D. (2019). Factors encouraging research productivity for academic librarians (V1) [Survey instrument and data]. UAL Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7939/DVN/JPBC81
Abstract

Articles: structured abstract should include objective, methods, results, and conclusions.
Use complete sentences.

Use bold font for abstract headings; follow headings with a space, a dash, and a space.

All words capitalized.

Objective – The research project sought to prove that the quick brown fox will jump over the lazy dog.

Methods – This was an observational study utilizing before-and-after lupine location analysis.

Results – The dog appeared to notice the brown fox prior to the anticipated jump, at which point he stood up and barked.  The jump was subsequently halted.

Conclusion – The fox was not quick enough and the dog was not lazy enough. The null hypothesis was proven to be accurate.

Author Contributions

 

(Appears after body of the paper)

Location--This statement goes after the full text of the article prior to the References pages and gets a top-level heading.

 

This statement is only for articles with more than one author. The official CRediT roles from NISO (originally CASRAI) are available here: https://credit.niso.org/

 

The available roles follow:

Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

 

 

 

EXAMPLE 1

 

Author Contributions

Zhang Lee: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software Aditi Singh: Data curation, Writing – original draft Neeru Acharya: Visualization, Investigation Noel Jenson: Supervision Vijay Kumar: Software, Validation Caryn Dillon: Writing – review & editing

 

EXAMPLE 2 (illustrating optional degrees of contribution)

 

Author Contributions

Pierro Correia: Writing – review & editing (equal) Anna Berkowitz: Conceptualization (lead), Writing – original draft (lead), Formal analysis (lead), Writing – review & editing (equal) Yolanda Roberto: Software (lead), Writing – review & editing (equal) Takaaki Yamada: Methodology (lead), Writing – review & editing (equal) Qian Wu: Conceptualization (supporting), Writing – original draft (supporting), Writing – review & editing (equal)

 Back to Table of Contents  

 

Headings Used In the Article and Appendix

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
Headings

Bold font;

align left.

Three Participating Libraries

Subheadings

(level 2 headings)

[Updated 2012]

Bold font;

italics;

align left.

Library One
Library Two
Library Three

Subheadings

(level 3 headings)

[Updated 2012]

Italics;

align left.

Staffing
Management Style
Personnel Issues
Appendix

Bold font; align left.

Label and caption each Appendix.

 

If more than one, use letters (A, B, C…). Add title.

File after list of References.

If only one appendix, no letters required.

In text, refer to as “Appendix A”

Appendix B    
Demographic Variables of Library Patrons

The questionnaire is included in Appendix A.

For details of the questionnaires, see the Appendix.

 Back to Table of Contents   

 

Line Spacing and Paragraph/Reference Indentations

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
Spacing Single space throughout except double space between paragraphs, sections, and entries in the References list.

Use only one space after periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, etc.

Space once after initials, but not inside abbreviations (except “U.S.” and “U.K.” when they are used as adjectives).
. . . end of Methods section.
 
Results and Discussion

Overview

Beginning of Results/Discussion section . . .


Berg, B. L. (2004). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Eldredge, J. D.
NHS, NIH, UK, US
e.g., a.m., i.e.

U.S. Army
Indentions
Do not indent first line of paragraphs.

Use hanging indent of 1.27 cm for the second and following lines of each item in the References list.
See Reference EXAMPLES for use of hanging indent 
 Back to Table of Contents  

 

Tables, Figures/Charts

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
Tables

Place tables as close as possible to the text to which they relate. 

Label as:
Table [insert Arabic numeral].

The caption is aligned left and capitalized as an article title.

The label (plain, not bold font) goes above the table; notes relating specifically to the table should appear directly underneath the table.

Table 1
Electronic Book Circulation Statistics a

   
   

 

a These statistics were collected from Sept. – Jan., 2007.

 

Figures/Charts

Illustrative material should be labeled as a figure.

Label as: Figure [insert Arabic numeral]

The label (plain, not bold font) is located immediately below the figure; caption should only have first word and proper nouns capitalized.

 

Figure 1
Word art inserted by creative librarian.

 Back to Table of Contents   

 

Citations in Text

(see also Citations in Manuscript Text)

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
Titles of Journals and Books, Database Names in text In the text, italicize journal and book titles.

Do not italicize database names.
The single greatest concern with this article, which appeared in the Journal of the Medical Library Association, is that it presents itself as covering all of the literature, whereas in actual fact it concentrates exclusively on the MEDLINE literature.
Article titles and book chapter titles in text
 

In the text, capitalize the first letters of significant words in titles.

Use quotation marks surrounding titles of journal articles or book chapters.

“Teaching and Practicing EBP”


Capitalize the first word in a title following a dash or colon. “EBP: An Analysis of Teaching and Practice”
Pagination 

Use pp. in references to book chapters or newspaper articles.  

 

In A. Booth & A. Brice (Eds.) Evidence-based practice for information professionals: a handbook (pp. 1-13).
Wolfe, M. K. (28 Aug. 1975). Motherhood. The Anchorage Times, pp. C1, C5.  
Do NOT use pp. for journal articles except for in-text references. Library Hi Tech, 24(3), 317-323.
For in-text references use pp. for multiple page, and p. for single page references. (Wilder, 1998, pp. 134-135)
(Pretty, 2004, p. 710)
  Back to Table of Contents   

 

Punctuation - Apostrophe, Commas, Ellipsis Points, Numerals, DOI, Urls and Quotation Marks

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
Apostrophe

The apostrophe indicates ownership or a contraction.

Do not use the apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation or a number.

Since the ‘80s, the medical school’s cafeteria has long been considered to be the undergraduate students’ meeting place. This has been the case since the ‘80s.
Commas
Use “serial commas” to separate 3 or more items in a series.

Use commas to separate nonrestrictive clauses and phrases.
The ceiling leaked in October, November, and April.

The lab will be built in the summer, which is historically the quietest month.

Though typically shy, Peter was a natural performer.
Ellipsis points    For an ellipsis within a sentence, use 3 periods with a space both before and after and between each point. “There is a house . . . they call the rising sun.”

Use 4 periods to indicate the end of 1 sentence, and an ellipsis before the end of the quote. “I saw the house. . . . the rising sun.”
Only use ellipsis points at the beginning or end of quotations to indicate the quote starts or ends midsentence. After a lengthy description, she concluded
“. . . but sometimes it’s just that way.”

“And sometimes it’s . . .”
Numerals       Use numerals when a number precedes a technical unit of measurement. Analysis shows an increase of 55% in the number of overdue books during the last two years.
Always use % with numerals.
88% (NOT “88 percent”)
Use numerals for a series of numbers related to similar things. Mr. Blue estimates that 80 of the 300 reference questions were virtual.
Spell out numbers less than 10, but not if used in the same sentence with larger numerals. In 2008, the library subscribed to 3,122 electronic books, though only 9 were used with any frequency.
Use commas in numerals consisting or 4 or more numbers. 1,234   123,456
Avoid beginning a sentence with a number; spell out numbers at the beginning of a sentence. Avoid: Forty-four of the participants were first-year students.

Preferred: There were 44 first-year students among the participants.
DOI – Digital Object Identifier

Always use a DOI when one is available; use an active link for the DOI.


Use full DOI link; include the full “https//doi.org/” prefix.


Avoid using just the DOI number; or “doi” in front of the number.

 

See Crossref DOI display guidelines here.

Bradley, J. (1993). Methodological issues and practices in qualitative research. Library Quarterly, 63(4), 431-449. https://doi.org/10.1086/602620


Use - https://doi.org/10.1086/602620

 

Avoid - 10.1086/602620 OR doi:10.1086/602620

URLs

Include active hyperlinks for URLs listed in manuscripts, including DOIs.

 

If the online reference lacks a DOI, use the URL.

When a URL exceeds the line length, end the line at a slash mark.

EBLIP is an online journal distributed electronically, and therefore hyperlinks and DOIs should be active.
Quotation marks
 
Use double quotation marks to identify unique words for emphasis. In beginning this narrative review we should acknowledge our personal antipathy to the label “evidence based librarianship.”
 Back to Table of Contents   

 

Quotations/Citations in Text

(see also Citations in Text and Citations in Manuscript Text )

 

TOPICS STYLE/FORMAT EXAMPLE
Punctuation in quotes
 

Commas and periods should always be located inside quotation marks. 

 

Whenever Dorothy and her friends mention “lions, tigers, and bears,” they always exclaim “oh, my!”

The most common reference asked is “Where is the washroom?”

Other punctuation should only go inside quotation marks if it is part of the quoted material.

The four respondents described the experience as “better than my mother’s lasagna, but not as good her brownies”; “so so, okey dokey”; “fantastically wonderful”; and “not as bad as an airport security pat down.”

Reputation rests on “three pillars”: honesty, integrity, and accountability.
Long, block quotations

Quotations of more than 40 significant words should be set apart as indented block quotations without quotation marks.

Add the parenthetical reference for the cited text following the final punctuation of the block quote.

 
Attribution of cited material – quoted or paraphrased

Quotations and paraphrases must include full attribution for the cited author, year of publication, and page number (if available).

The date information should be introduced in the text immediately following the author’s name, in parentheses.

If page numbers are used, these should be appended in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

Abbott (2006) reported that “a survey . . .” (p. 60).

“A survey . . .” (Abbott, 2006, p. 60).
Citations within quotations

Leave citations within quotations.

There is no need to include the quoted citation in the list of references unless it is also cited elsewhere in the summary/article.

 
Quotes within quotations (e.g., in qualitative research) The “inner quote” or quoted words should be placed in single quotation marks, and double quotation marks placed around the larger quote. Storm (2006) reports that “respondents most often used the words ‘light,’ ‘drifting,’ and ‘floating’ to describe their experience” (p. 53).
 Back to Table of Contents 
Creative Commons License 2021 Stephenson, Pretty, Hayman, and Healy. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

 

 
 
 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.