Real examples of examples of example of IEEE format references

Examples of IEEE references for journal articles

Let’s start with the type of source you’ll probably cite most often: journal articles. When students ask for examples of examples of example of IEEE format references, they usually mean, “Show me a real journal article citation that would not get me marked down.”

In IEEE style, journal references are numbered in the order they appear in the text, and the reference entry typically includes:

• Author initials and last names
• Article title in quotation marks
• Journal title in italics
• Volume, issue, page range
• Month and year
• DOI (when available)

Here is a realistic example of a 2024 journal article reference in IEEE format:

[1] A. R. Smith and J. K. Patel, “Deep learning approaches for wildfire prediction in the western United States,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 1452–1464, Mar. 2024, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3321456.

Notice a few points that often trip people up:

• Initials come before last names.
• Only the first word of the article title and proper nouns are capitalized.
• The journal title is abbreviated according to IEEE standards (for real journals, you can check the official abbreviation on the publisher’s site or in databases like IEEE Xplore).

Here’s another example of a journal reference, this time with three authors and no issue number:

[2] L. Chen, M. D. Harris, and T. Nguyen, “Secure federated learning for healthcare data analytics,” IEEE J. Biomed. Health Inform., vol. 28, pp. 210–221, Jan. 2025, doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2024.3350123.

If you compare these two, you already have two strong examples of examples of example of IEEE format references for journal articles—one with volume and issue, one with volume only. That’s the kind of variation instructors expect you to handle correctly.

Examples of IEEE format references for conference papers

Conference proceedings are another category where students beg for real examples because the formatting feels oddly specific. In IEEE style, conference entries usually include:

• Authors
• Paper title in quotation marks
• Conference name in italics
• Location
• Page range
• Month and year

Here is a realistic 2024 example of a conference paper reference:

[3] D. M. Lopez and S. K. Roy, “Energy-efficient routing for large-scale IoT sensor networks,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Commun. (ICC), Denver, CO, USA, Jun. 2024, pp. 3321–3326.

And another example of a 2025 conference paper with an online-only format and DOI:

[4] R. Gupta, E. Johnson, and P. Zhao, “Privacy-preserving contact tracing with verifiable computation,” in Proc. 2025 IEEE Symp. Security and Privacy (SP), San Francisco, CA, USA, May 2025, pp. 101–113, doi: 10.1109/SP.2025.00021.

These are practical examples of examples of example of IEEE format references for conferences because they show two common realities:

• Traditional print-style proceedings with page numbers
• Modern digital proceedings that still provide page numbers plus a DOI

If your conference paper is strictly online and only has an article number, you adapt the pattern like this:

[5] M. M. Ali and S. Brown, “Edge AI for real-time traffic monitoring in smart cities,” in Proc. IEEE Global Commun. Conf. (GLOBECOM), virtual conf., Dec. 2024, Art. no. 4509, doi: 10.1109/GLOBECOM54140.2024.10567890.

Examples of IEEE references for books and book chapters

When you move beyond articles, examples include books and chapters, which follow a slightly different pattern. Many style guides show only one generic book template, but you need best examples that mirror what you actually cite in engineering, computing, and data science.

A full book in IEEE style generally includes:

• Author initials and last name
• Book title in italics
• Edition (if not the first)
• Publisher
• City (in many older examples; newer IEEE examples sometimes omit city)
• Year

Here is a realistic example of a 2023 technical book reference:

[6] S. Haykin, Neural Networks and Learning Machines, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA: Pearson, 2023.

For a chapter in an edited volume, IEEE adds the chapter title and editor information. A real-world style example of a book chapter reference looks like this:

[7] K. P. Murphy, “Probabilistic graphical models,” in Handbook of Machine Learning, A. Smola and B. Schölkopf, Eds. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2024, ch. 3, pp. 55–92.

These two entries give you solid examples of examples of example of IEEE format references for long-form sources: one for a single-author book, one for a chapter within an edited book.

Web and government sources: examples of IEEE online references

Modern research almost always includes a few web-based sources: government reports, health data, or educational guidelines. Many instructors are picky about these, which is why students keep asking for examples of examples of example of IEEE format references specifically for websites.

IEEE’s general approach to web sources includes:

• Author or organization
• Page or report title in quotation marks
• Site or publisher name in italics
• Access date
• URL

Here are a few realistic best examples you can adapt.

A government health resource from a .gov site:

[8] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Climate effects on health,” CDC, 2024. Accessed: Sep. 12, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.cdc.gov/climateandhealth/effects/

A medical overview from a well-known U.S. health organization:

[9] Mayo Clinic Staff, “Type 2 diabetes,” Mayo Clinic, Jun. 2024. Accessed: Sep. 12, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/

An education-related resource from a university (.edu):

[10] Harvard University, “Guidelines for academic integrity in research,” Harvard University, 2023. Accessed: Sep. 12, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://provost.harvard.edu/academic-integrity

These three give you examples of examples of example of IEEE format references for online sources from .gov, .org, and .edu domains. The pattern stays consistent:

• Identify the author or institutional author.
• Use an access date (IEEE prefers “Accessed: Month Day, Year”).
• Keep the URL as is—no need to shorten it.

Examples of IEEE references for technical reports and standards

If you’re working in engineering or computer science, you’ll eventually cite standards and technical reports. Here, examples include IEEE standards, NIST reports, and other formal documents.

A classic example of an IEEE standard in IEEE reference format:

[11] IEEE Standard for Ethernet, IEEE Std 802.3-2022 (Revision of IEEE Std 802.3-2018), Jun. 2022.

And a technical report from a U.S. government agency:

[12] National Institute of Standards and Technology, “NIST cybersecurity framework 2.0,” NIST, Gaithersburg, MD, USA, Tech. Rep. NIST CSF 2.0, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework

These are practical examples of examples of example of IEEE format references for nontraditional sources where there may be no journal, volume, or issue. The key moves are:

• Use the official organization name as the author when no personal author is listed.
• Include report type and number (Tech. Rep., Std, etc.) when provided.

Examples of in-text citations matching IEEE references

A reference list full of perfect entries is useless if your in-text citations don’t match. When people ask for examples of examples of example of IEEE format references, they really need to see how the bracketed numbers appear in sentences.

In IEEE style, you cite using square brackets and the reference number:

• As part of the sentence: “As shown in [3], the proposed routing protocol reduces energy consumption…”
• At the end of a sentence: “Federated learning has been widely explored in healthcare [2], [9].”

A short paragraph with realistic in-text use might look like this:

Recent work on wildfire prediction using deep learning has demonstrated significant improvements in early detection accuracy [1]. Similar techniques have been adapted for healthcare analytics, particularly in privacy-preserving federated learning scenarios [2]. When applied to large-scale IoT networks, energy-efficient routing strategies can further reduce communication overhead [3], [5]. Public health agencies have also emphasized the importance of reliable data and transparent modeling practices in climate-related health research [8].

This kind of paragraph gives you examples of how the numbered references from your list actually show up in real prose.

2024–2025 trends: why current IEEE examples matter

If you’re wondering why you should care about 2024–2025 data when looking for examples of examples of example of IEEE format references, there’s a practical reason: instructors increasingly check whether your sources are current. They don’t just want perfect formatting; they want references that make sense for today’s research landscape.

Recent trends that affect how you format IEEE references include:

• Greater use of DOIs, even for conference papers and some reports.
• More online-only conferences with article numbers instead of traditional page ranges (see [5]).
• Increased reliance on authoritative web sources for health, climate, and policy topics, especially from domains like .gov, .edu, and major medical organizations.

That’s why the best examples of IEEE references now often include DOIs, access dates, and clear institutional authors, rather than the older, minimalist patterns you see in outdated handouts.

If you want to double-check anything, IEEE’s own style guidance is still the final word. You can compare the examples here against the official documentation from the IEEE Author Center or university libraries like MIT Libraries and Purdue OWL for cross-checking citation patterns.

FAQ: common questions about IEEE reference examples

How many examples of IEEE references should I include in my paper?

There’s no fixed number. Instead of counting how many examples of references you have, think about whether you’ve cited enough high-quality sources to support your argument. A short undergraduate paper might have 8–15 references, while a thesis can easily go over 50. What matters is that every reference follows a consistent IEEE pattern like the examples of examples of example of IEEE format references shown above.

Can I mix different types of sources in IEEE format?

Yes. A strong paper usually mixes journal articles, conference papers, books, technical reports, and authoritative websites. The key is consistency: each type should match the example of its category. For instance, your journal entries should look like [1] and [2], your conference entries like [3]–[5], and your web entries like [8]–[10].

Where can I find more real examples of IEEE references?

The most reliable way is to look at recent papers in IEEE journals and conferences via IEEE Xplore. Those articles are professionally formatted and give you real examples of how references are handled in practice. You can also check university writing centers and library guides from institutions like Harvard or MIT, which often provide updated IEEE examples.

Is it okay to use citation generators for IEEE format?

You can, but treat them as a starting point, not the final version. Citation tools often miss details like proper IEEE journal abbreviations or capitalization rules. Use them to draft an entry, then compare it with examples of examples of example of IEEE format references from official IEEE sources or from this guide. A quick manual check usually fixes the last 10–20% of errors.

What’s the most common mistake students make with IEEE references?

Two things show up constantly:

• Mixing IEEE with another style (like APA) in the same reference list.
• Forgetting that IEEE is numbered in order of appearance, not alphabetically.

If you model your list on the best examples above—numbered in the order cited and formatted consistently—you’ll avoid the mistakes that cost the most points.

If you keep this page open while you build your reference list, you’ll have a live set of examples of examples of example of IEEE format references you can adapt line by line. Match your sources to the closest example type, tweak the details, and you’ll be much closer to the way IEEE references actually look in published research.