IEEE Style Guide

In-Text Citations

Reference in the text

• A number enclosed in square brackets, eg. [1] or [26], placed in the text of the essay, indicates the relevant reference.

• Each reference number should be enclosed in square brackets on the same line as the text, before any punctuation, with a space before the bracket.

• Citations are numbered in the order in which they appear in the text and each citation corresponds to a numbered reference containing publication information about the source cited in the reference list at the end of the publication, essay or assignment.

• Once a source has been cited, the same number is used in all subsequent references.

• No distinction is made between print and electronic references when citing within the text.

Examples of in-text referencing:

"...end of the line for my research [13]."
"The suggestion was first put noted in [1]." "Jones [2] has stated that......."
"Recent studies [5], [7], [9], [11] have also described..."
"For example, see [7]."

• The author(s) or the date are not mentioned as part of the in-text reference unless it is relevant to your text.

• You do not need to refer to the reference as "in reference [3] ..." "In [3] ..." is sufficient.

NB: If you use a direct quote in-text, you must include a page number.

e.g.: In Pan et al.'s study, incongruent patch-word combinations lead to "significantly slower" performance [3, p. 8].

Citing more than one reference at a time

• When citing more than one source at a time, the preferred method is to list each reference number separately with a comma or dash between each reference:

Preferred
[1], [3], [5]

[1] - [5]

• Although the following method is also acceptable:

Acceptable
[1, 3, 5]

[1-5]

Citing a reference multiple times

• When citing a source for a second or subsequent time, do not use ibid or op. cit.

• Use the same reference number previously used for that citation (for example, if the work by Smith was [3] the first time you cited it, it will be [3] everytime you cite it from then on).

• If referring to a different page number, or other reference, within the source, use the following forms:

[3, pp. 5-10], [3, Ch.  2, pp. 6-21], [3, Fig. 1], [3, Sec. 4.5]