Teacher: B.

Badjou EL502: Part 01/Lecture 04 Spring Term, 2025 IEEE/UMBB

IEEE Reference Style

Introduction

In addition to the IMRaD format that every research paper must abide by, it is
academically compulsory to comply with a reference style too. The famous reference
styles are Harvard, APA, MLA, ACM, each of which is preferably used in a specific
discipline. The reference styles Harvard, APA and ACM, for instance, are used in natural
sciences, social sciences, and computer science, respectively.

1. What is a reference style?

A reference style (also known as manual of style or style guide)1 is a set of standards
(recommendations) for the writing, formatting and design of documents. Reference
styles ensure avoiding plagiarism2 and implementing consistency -the following of the
very same rules of language, referencing, and formatting throughout the whole report to
give it a professional appearance and thus allowing the readers to concentrate on the
content. Being one of research rigors, reference styles make writing a scholarly paper
and reading it easier and professional.

2. IEEE style guide

The IEEE reference style is the standard referencing format set by The Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the world’s largest association of technical
professionals, and is based on the widely used Chicago Manual of style (CMS). It is
used primarily for publications in electronic and electrical engineering,
telecommunications, computer science and information technology. It consists of the
sections below.

1
It is not meant by style here its linguistic sense (informal or formal, etc.). Rather, it simply means “a certain way of doing
something.”
2
See appendix below.

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2.1. Writing

IEEE recommends, among others, concision and consistency as in the examples beneath.
3.1.1 Concision
1) If you are using a figure from a reference, do not write “in Fig.1 of reference [5]”
but simply “in [5, Fig.1]” or “in [5, eq. (2)].
2) Substitute the reference number for the name of the author.
You can write Jack [1], Bill [9] and John [11] have demonstrated that . . ., but it is
preferable to simply write [1], [9], and [11] have demonstrated that . . .
3.1.2 Consistency
IEEE recommends capitalizing the first letter of a cross-reference like in “see
Chapter 1/Figure 2/Table 2-3”.
It also recommends using a comma before the last and/or in series such as London,
Sydney, and New York.
2.2. Formatting & design (see layout and IMRaD format in lectures 02 and 03).
2.3. Citing
Knowledge is cumulative: In other words, all research is based on previous findings by
other researchers. The ideas, information, theories … you use in your report are
either common knowledge or not. If they are common knowledge, then you do not need
to cite your reference. For example, water boils at 100°C is known to all specialists.

2.3.1. How to test if a piece of information is common knowledge?

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Ask the following question: “Is this idea or piece of information be familiar to my
classmates who have not researched the subject?” The answer is either 1) or 2).
1) If the answer is yes, then it is needless to cite the source.
2) If the answer is no, then you must indicate the source of the material, even if it
appears in several texts; otherwise, you commit a disciplinary offence, called
plagiarism3.
2.3.2. Ways of using others’ ideas
1. Quoting4: You take others’ thoughts word for word provided that you put them
between quotation marks and you cite them.
2. Paraphrasing: You reformulate others’ ideas by keeping their same meaning
but using different syntax and vocabulary. (You still in this case need to cite
the ideas as they are not yours.) Beware that any failure in proper reformulation
through imitating the sentence structure or vocabulary of the source is an
offence, known as patch-writing. (See the example and picture below).

3
It is copying unintentionally or deliberately ideas without citing the source for credit.
4
Typically, direct quotes are not used in applied research.

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Original text

Foot and Stoffman (1996) theorize that a likely reason for the
baby boom is that Canadians knew they were able to afford
Why did the baby boom happen? A
large families. Because the economy was healthy, young
likely explanation is that during
people saw a lot of promise in their future, which they
those 20 years, Canadians knew
desired to share with a large family. Another reason was the
they could afford large families. The
high number of immigrants.
postwar economy was robust, the
future seemed full of promise, and Proper paraphrase
young couples wanted to share that
Foot and Stoffman (1996) theorize that there were two main
bright future with a big family. A
reasons behind the baby boom, namely immigration that
second reason was the high
remained consistently high and a thriving economy that
immigration levels that prevailed
made young Canadians feel optimistic and gave them the
during the 1950s.
confidence that they would have the means to support the
large family they desired.

Note

If you digest a long text and give its gist, then you are summarizing, and if you are
dealing with different sources regarding one point seen from different angles and
transforming that into one text, then you are synthesizing.
3. IEEE Citation Format
3.1. External referencing

IEEE uses a numbering system to make sure the paper is still readable. Enclosed in
square brackets, the number within the text correlates to a numbered reference at the
end of the research paper to make it clear which source contributed to which section of
the paper.

 . . . as seen in [3, p.17], “the proposed circuit improved signal attenuation . . .”.

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 Norton’s theorems are widely used for circuit analysis simplification according
to [1]―[5].
4. According to [7, Tab. 11], there is little evidence that . . .
5. Taylor et al. [3] have noted . . .
3.1.1. List of references

The reference list appears at the end of your paper and provides full details of all the
references you have used. List all the references numerically in the order they have
been cited within the paper, and include the bracketed number at the beginning of
each reference.
Example:

[1] L. Norton, Circuits. 2nd ed. New York: Elsevier, 1994. p. 70.

Note that when referencing in IEEE style, there are different formats for each source
type—for example, a book should be formatted differently to a website or academic
journal in the reference list. Here is an example of a website.

[7] Emarketer.com, ‘Social Networking and Communication Theories’, 2019. [Online]. Available: http:
//www.emerketer.com/Article/Social-Networking-And-Communication—heories/1009976. [Accessed:
10-Jun-2019]

3.1.2. Secondary referencing

It occurs sometimes that you find an interesting piece of information in a book, but it is
taken from a different source. In this case, you have to proceed in the following order to
showcase your commitment:

1) You locate the original source so that you can use and cite directly from it—
something IEEE recommends.

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2) If the original source is difficult to access, do not worry, cite the source in which

you have found that piece of information5.

If at any point you wish to refer back to a previous section within the text of your paper,
you should capitalize the word concerned “Section, Chapter, Figure, Equation, Appendix
. . .” and separate subsections from the primary section numeral with a hyphen, e.g.,
“Section 02,” “Section II-A,” “Section III-B4c,” etc.

3.2.1 Footnotes
In case you need to incorporate an additional remark desiring not to appear within the
main text of your report, IEEE recommends using footnotes, which appear at the bottom
of the page.
Notes

1) A number of programs can help you manage your citations and references. They
include Word processor (with the built-in feature), EndNote, Mendeley, and
Zotero.
2) After you finish writing your report, you can make sure that you committed no
plagiarism through using online plagiarism checkers.

Assignment

1) Check the model report for respect of IEEE style.

5
However, if you use a different style guide, check it for recommendations on this matter.

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Appendix

The statement of originality should be worded as follows.

'This report is submitted as part requirement for the degree of Master in science at the

University of Sussex. It is the product of my own labour except where indicated in

the text. The report may be freely copied and distributed provided the source is

acknowledged. I hereby give / withhold permission for a copy of this report to be loaned

out to students in future years (delete as necessary).'

References

1) IEEE Reference Guide. IEEE periodicals, USA, 2018.

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