IEEE citation style
General Guidelines
In-text citation
- In-text citations are shown as numbers within square brackets, for example “According to [2]…”, “As demonstrated in [3]–[5]…”.
- The numbers increase sequentially with each additional source that you cite.
- If you cite the same source more than once, use the same number rather than creating a new reference. Remember that if you move text with a citation after writing your document, you must resequence your references to correspond.
- Do not say “in reference [1] …”; rather, the text should be written to read simply, “in [3] …”.
- The author’s name generally should not be included in a text reference with a number (i.e., “In Patel [1]”) and should be changed to “in [3]” except in such cases where the author’s name is integral to the understanding of the sentence (e.g., “Patel [3] reduced calculated time …”).
Reference list
- Reference numbers are aligned to the left margin and form a column of their own.
- Use "et al." to signify that a document has more than six authors.
- All references, except those ending with URLs, will end with a period, including those with a DOI.
- Check the IEEE Editorial Style Manual for official abbreviations. Many commonly used terms as well as specific IEEE journals should be abbreviated in the references.