ieee-style

name	ieee-style
category	publication
discipline	engineering
description	IEEE citation and formatting rules for engineering journals and conferences

IEEE Style

Citation and formatting rules based on the IEEE Reference Guide. Used by all IEEE Transactions, IEEE conferences, and many engineering journals.

When to Use

• When submitting to any IEEE journal or conference
• When the target venue specifies IEEE citation format
• When submitting to engineering journals that follow IEEE conventions

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Protocol

1. In-Text Citations

• Use Arabic numerals in square brackets: [1], [2], [3]
• Number references in the order they first appear in the text
• Place brackets before punctuation, with a space before the bracket
• Multiple citations: [1], [2] or [1]-[3] for consecutive ranges
• Use the citation number as a noun when needed: "As shown in [5]..."

Examples:

Recent work has shown promising results [1].
Several studies [2]-[4] have confirmed this finding.
As demonstrated in [5], the algorithm achieves state-of-the-art performance.
The approach builds on [1] and [6].
Smith et al. [7] proposed a novel framework.

2. Reference List Format

References are listed numerically in the order cited, with the number in square brackets.

2.1 Author Names

• Format: First initial(s). Last name (e.g., J. Smith, A. B. Jones)
• Multiple authors: separate with commas; use "and" before the last author
• Up to 6 authors: list all
• 7 or more authors: list the first 3 authors followed by et al.
• Corporate authors: use the organization name as-is

2.2 Journal Article

Format:

[N] A. Author, B. Author, and C. Author, "Title of article," Abbreviated Journal Name,
    vol. X, no. Y, pp. Z1-Z2, Month Year, doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx.

Rules:

• Article title: in double quotes, sentence case
• Journal name: in italics, abbreviated per IEEE standard
• Volume, number, pages, month, year follow specific format
• Include DOI when available

Example:

[1] S. Zhang, C. Zhu, J. K. O. Sin, and P. K. T. Mok, "A novel ultrathin elevated
    channel low-temperature poly-Si TFT," IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 20, no. 11,
    pp. 569-571, Nov. 1999, doi: 10.1109/55.798012.

Example -- 7+ authors:

[2] M. Ito, K. Takahashi, S. Yamamoto, et al., "Adaptive beamforming for massive MIMO
    systems," IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 5432-5445, Aug. 2023,
    doi: 10.1109/TWC.2023.1234567.

Example -- early access:

[3] L. Chen and R. Wang, "Deep reinforcement learning for network slicing," IEEE Trans.
    Netw. Service Manag., early access, Jun. 2024, doi: 10.1109/TNSM.2024.3456789.

2.3 Conference Paper

Format:

[N] A. Author, "Title of paper," in Proc. Conference Name, City, State/Country, Year,
    pp. X-Y, doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx.

Example:

[4] D. B. Payne and H. G. Gunhold, "Digital sundials and broadband communications," in
    Proc. 3rd Annu. Conf. Explor. Technol. (ExplTech), Miami, FL, USA, 2019, pp. 113-117,
    doi: 10.1109/ExplTech.2019.1234567.

Example -- without page numbers (common for recent conferences):

[5] A. Vaswani et al., "Attention is all you need," in Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process.
    Syst. (NeurIPS), Long Beach, CA, USA, 2017, pp. 5998-6008.

2.4 Book

Format:

[N] A. Author, Title of Book, edition. City, State/Country: Publisher, Year.

Example:

[6] B. Klaus and P. Horn, Robot Vision, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2005.

Example -- edited book:

[7] D. Sarunyagate, Ed., Lasers. New York, NY, USA: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

2.5 Book Chapter

Format:

[N] A. Author, "Title of chapter," in Title of Book, A. Editor, Ed., edition. City,
    State/Country: Publisher, Year, pp. X-Y.

Example:

[8] L. Stein, "Random sampling," in Handbook of Computer Science, A. B. Tucker, Ed.,
    2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press, 2004, pp. 24.1-24.11.

2.6 Standard

Format:

[N] Title of Standard, Standard Number, Organization, City, State/Country, Year.

Example:

[9] IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks, IEEE Std. 802.11-2020,
    IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2021.

2.7 Patent

Format:

[N] A. Author, "Title of patent," Country Patent Number, Month Day, Year.

Example:

[10] J. P. Wilkinson, "Nonlinear resonant circuit devices," U.S. Patent 3 624 125,
     Jul. 16, 1990.

2.8 Online Source

Format:

[N] A. Author. "Title of page." Website Name. URL (accessed Mon. Day, Year).

Example:

[11] J. Jones. "Networks." Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Online]. Available:
     https://www.britannica.com/technology/networks (accessed Jan. 15, 2024).

Example -- no author:

[12] "How to use Python for data science." Real Python. [Online]. Available:
     https://realpython.com/data-science/ (accessed Mar. 10, 2024).

2.9 Thesis / Dissertation

Format:

[N] A. Author, "Title of thesis," M.S./Ph.D. thesis/dissertation, Dept., Univ., City,
    State/Country, Year.

Example:

[13] N. Kawasaki, "Parametric study of thermal and chemical nonequilibrium nozzle flow,"
     M.S. thesis, Dept. Electron. Eng., Osaka Univ., Osaka, Japan, 1993.

2.10 arXiv Preprint

Format:

[N] A. Author, "Title," arXiv:XXXX.XXXXX, Year.

Example:

[14] A. Radford, J. Wu, R. Child, D. Luan, D. Amodei, and I. Sutskever, "Language models
     are unsupervised multitask learners," arXiv:2005.14165, 2020.

2.11 Technical Report

Format:

[N] A. Author, "Title of report," Organization, City, State/Country, Report Number, Year.

Example:

[15] E. E. Reber, R. L. Michell, and C. J. Carter, "Oxygen absorption in the earth's
     atmosphere," Aerospace Corp., Los Angeles, CA, USA, Tech. Rep. TR-0200, 1988.

3. Journal Name Abbreviations

Use IEEE standard abbreviations. Common examples:

Full Name	Abbreviation
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence	IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell.
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems	IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. Learn. Syst.
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing	IEEE Trans. Signal Process.
IEEE Communications Letters	IEEE Commun. Lett.
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications	IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun.
IEEE Access	IEEE Access
Proceedings of the IEEE	Proc. IEEE

Reference for abbreviations: IEEE Reference Guide, Appendix, or https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/

4. Conference Name Abbreviations

• Use "Proc." for Proceedings
• Abbreviate conference names: "Int." for International, "Conf." for Conference, "Symp." for Symposium
• Include the acronym in parentheses after the abbreviated name
• Include the ordinal number if applicable

Common examples:

Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR)
Proc. Int. Conf. Mach. Learn. (ICML)
Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. (NeurIPS)
Proc. Annu. Meeting Assoc. Comput. Linguist. (ACL)
Proc. Int. Conf. Learn. Represent. (ICLR)
Proc. AAAI Conf. Artif. Intell. (AAAI)

5. DOI Format

• Include DOI at the end of the reference when available
• Format: doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx. (lowercase "doi", space after colon, period at end)
• If no DOI, include URL with access date for online sources

6. Formatting Conventions

• Titles of articles and papers: in double quotes, sentence case
• Book and journal titles: in italics
• Volume: "vol." (lowercase, abbreviated)
• Number/Issue: "no." (lowercase, abbreviated)
• Pages: "pp." for range, "p." for single page
• Months: abbreviated to first 3 letters (Jan., Feb., Mar., etc.)
• Edition: "2nd ed.", "3rd ed.", etc.
• Editor: "Ed." (singular), "Eds." (plural)

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Checklist

Citations

• Square brackets used for all in-text citations
• Citations numbered sequentially in order of first appearance
• Brackets placed before punctuation
• Consecutive citations use hyphen ranges (e.g., [1]-[3])

References

• References numbered to match in-text citations
• Author names formatted as Initial(s). LastName
• "and" used before last author (not a comma)
• First 3 authors listed when 7 or more, followed by et al.
• Article/paper titles in double quotes, sentence case
• Journal/book titles in italics
• Volume, number, pages, and month abbreviated correctly
• DOIs included where available
• Conference location (city, state/country) included
• Access dates provided for online sources
• All references cited in text; no orphan references

Formatting

• IEEE template used (if required by venue)
• Two-column format (for most IEEE publications)
• Abstract within word limit (typically 150-250 words)
• Keywords provided (typically 3-5 IEEE index terms)

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References

• IEEE. IEEE Reference Guide. IEEE Author Center. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/your-role-in-article-production/ieee-editorial-style-manual/
• IEEE. IEEE Editorial Style Manual for Authors. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/
• IEEE. Manuscript Templates for IEEE Transactions. https://template-selector.ieee.org/