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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.

An example

A short paragraph with in-text citations and a corresponding reference list in IEEE citation style
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