Best examples of examples of IEEE reference page example formats

IEEE style dominates electrical engineering, computer science, and many information technology conferences and journals. If you submit to an IEEE venue, your reference page is not a decorative afterthought. Editors expect consistency with the official IEEE Editorial Style Manual and the IEEE Reference Guide.

That’s where strong, realistic examples of examples of IEEE reference page example entries become your best friend. When you can see a finished citation for a journal article, a conference paper, an official standard, and a web page, it’s much easier to reverse‑engineer the pattern than to memorize abstract rules.

Below, I’ll walk through multiple source types and show:

• How the reference should look on the IEEE reference page
• How the matching in-text citation number appears
• Why the formatting choices matter

All examples follow the core IEEE pattern: numbered references in the order they appear in the text, with author initials before last names, and minimal punctuation.

Core pattern: journal article examples of IEEE reference page example entries

Let’s start with the workhorse of academic writing: journal articles. Most IEEE papers cite at least a few peer‑reviewed articles, so these are among the best examples of IEEE reference page example formats to master.

General IEEE pattern for journal articles

[#] A. A. Author and B. B. Author, "Title of article," *Title of Journal*, vol. x, no. y, pp. xx–yy, Month Year, doi: xx.xxxx/xxxxx.

Here are several real‑style examples of examples of IEEE reference page example citations for journal articles.

Example 1 – AI in healthcare (journal)

Reference list:

[1] A. Esteva, B. Kuprel, R. A. Novoa *et al.*, "Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks," *Nature*, vol. 542, no. 7639, pp. 115–118, Feb. 2017, doi: 10.1038/nature21056.

In-text:

...deep learning can match specialist performance in skin cancer classification [1].

This is a strong example of an IEEE reference page example because it shows how to handle multiple authors, use italics for the journal title, and include the DOI.

Example 2 – Cybersecurity (journal)

Reference list:

[2] N. Papernot, P. McDaniel, A. Sinha, and M. Wellman, "SoK: Towards the science of security and privacy in machine learning," *2018 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)*, pp. 399–414, Apr. 2018, doi: 10.1109/EuroSP.2018.00035.

In-text:

Adversarial attacks highlight new risks in machine learning systems [2].

Even though this is technically a conference paper, IEEE often formats high‑profile proceedings similarly to journals, which is why it’s a helpful example of a borderline case.

Conference paper examples of IEEE reference page example formats

Conference proceedings are the backbone of fast‑moving fields like AI and networking. IEEE has a consistent approach here.

General IEEE pattern for conference papers

[#] A. A. Author, "Title of paper," in *Proceedings of the Name of Conference*, City, Country, Year, pp. xx–yy, doi: xx.xxxx/xxxxx.

Here are a few real‑style examples.

Example 3 – Transformer models (conference)

Reference list:

[3] A. Vaswani, N. Shazeer, N. Parmar *et al.*, "Attention is all you need," in *Proc. 31st Conf. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. (NeurIPS)*, Long Beach, CA, USA, 2017, pp. 5998–6008.

In-text:

The transformer architecture reshaped modern NLP [3].

Note the use of Proc. to abbreviate “Proceedings” and the city/state detail, which are both common in high‑quality IEEE reference page examples.

Example 4 – Edge computing (IEEE conference)

Reference list:

[4] M. Satyanarayanan, P. Bahl, R. Caceres, and N. Davies, "The case for VM-based cloudlets in mobile computing," in *Proc. 1st ACM Workshop on Mobile Cloud Computing and Services*, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2010, pp. 1–8, doi: 10.1145/1810931.1810936.

This example of an IEEE reference page example shows how to cite a workshop that’s part of a larger conference ecosystem.

Standard and technical report examples of IEEE reference page example entries

Engineering work lives and dies by standards and technical reports. IEEE style expects you to cite them precisely, especially when you rely on protocols or safety specifications.

General IEEE pattern for standards

[#] Name of Standard, "Title of standard," Standard number, Publisher, City, State (if USA), Year.

Example 5 – IEEE Wi‑Fi standard

Reference list:

[5] IEEE Standard for Information Technology—Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems Local and Metropolitan Area Networks—Specific Requirements—Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, IEEE Std 802.11-2020, 2021.

In-text:

Modern Wi‑Fi implementations typically comply with IEEE 802.11-2020 [5].

General IEEE pattern for technical reports

[#] A. A. Author, "Title of report," Organization, City, State, Report number, Month Year. [Online]. Available: URL

Example 6 – Government technical report

Reference list:

[6] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity," Gaithersburg, MD, USA, NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, Feb. 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework

In-text:

The updated NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 emphasizes outcome-based controls [6].

This is one of the best examples of IEEE reference page example formatting for public technical reports: it includes the organization as author, location, report identifier, and an online access note.

Website and online source examples of IEEE reference page example formatting

Online sources are where students most often lose IEEE marks. The style is stricter than “copy the URL and hope for the best.”

General IEEE pattern for websites

[#] A. A. Author, "Title of page," Website Name. Accessed: Month Day, Year. [Online]. Available: URL

When there is no individual author, use the organization as the author.

Example 7 – Government health site (CDC)

Reference list:

[7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "COVID-19: Science brief: SARS-CoV-2 transmission," CDC. Accessed: Nov. 10, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs.html

In-text:

Updated evidence on airborne transmission is summarized by the CDC [7].

Example 8 – University guidance page (Harvard)

Reference list:

[8] Harvard University, "Using sources: Citation and academic integrity," Harvard College Writing Center. Accessed: Oct. 2, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu

In-text:

Many universities provide practical citation guidance for students [8].

These are excellent examples of examples of IEEE reference page example entries for web content because they show clear authorship, a specific access date, and clean URLs.

Dataset, software, and preprint examples of IEEE reference page example entries

Modern research in 2024–2025 leans heavily on datasets, open‑source software, and preprints hosted on servers like arXiv. IEEE style has adapted, and you should too.

Dataset examples

General IEEE pattern for datasets

[#] A. A. Author, "Title of dataset," Publisher/Repository, Year. [Online]. Available: URL

Example 9 – Image dataset (ImageNet)

Reference list:

[9] J. Deng, W. Dong, R. Socher *et al.*, "ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database," ImageNet, 2009. [Online]. Available: https://www.image-net.org

In-text:

ImageNet remains a benchmark dataset for visual recognition systems [9].

Software examples

General IEEE pattern for software tools

[#] A. A. Author, "Title of software (version)," Publisher/Organization, Year. [Online]. Available: URL

Example 10 – TensorFlow

Reference list:

[10] Google, "TensorFlow (version 2.16)," Google, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.tensorflow.org

In-text:

Experiments were implemented using TensorFlow 2.16 [10].

Preprint examples (arXiv)

General IEEE pattern for arXiv preprints

[#] A. A. Author, "Title of paper," *arXiv*, Identifier, Month Year. [Online]. Available: URL

Example 11 – arXiv preprint

Reference list:

[11] T. Brown, B. Mann, N. Ryder *et al.*, "Language models are few-shot learners," *arXiv*, arXiv:2005.14165, May 2020. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165

In-text:

Large language models can generalize from a handful of examples [11].

These dataset, software, and preprint entries are some of the best examples of IEEE reference page example formatting for modern research workflows.

Putting it together: sample IEEE reference page with mixed sources

To see how everything fits, imagine the end of a short IEEE-style paper. A clean reference page might look like this:

`[1] A. Esteva, B. Kuprel, R. A. Novoa et al., “Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks,” Nature, vol. 542, no. 7639, pp. 115–118, Feb. 2017, doi: 10.1038/nature21056.

[2] N. Papernot, P. McDaniel, A. Sinha, and M. Wellman, “SoK: Towards the science of security and privacy in machine learning,” 2018 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P), pp. 399–414, Apr. 2018, doi: 10.1109/EuroSP.2018.00035.

[3] A. Vaswani, N. Shazeer, N. Parmar et al., “Attention is all you need,” in Proc. 31st Conf. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. (NeurIPS), Long Beach, CA, USA, 2017, pp. 5998–6008.

[4] M. Satyanarayanan, P. Bahl, R. Caceres, and N. Davies, “The case for VM-based cloudlets in mobile computing,” in Proc. 1st ACM Workshop on Mobile Cloud Computing and Services, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2010, pp. 1–8, doi: 10.1145/1810931.1810936.

[5] IEEE Standard for Information Technology—Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems Local and Metropolitan Area Networks—Specific Requirements—Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, IEEE Std 802.11-2020, 2021.

[6] National Institute of Standards and Technology, “Framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity,” Gaithersburg, MD, USA, NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, Feb. 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework

[7] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “COVID-19: Science brief: SARS-CoV-2 transmission,” CDC. Accessed: Nov. 10, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs.html

[8] Harvard University, “Using sources: Citation and academic integrity,” Harvard College Writing Center. Accessed: Oct. 2, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu

[9] J. Deng, W. Dong, R. Socher et al., “ImageNet: A large-scale hierarchical image database,” ImageNet, 2009. [Online]. Available: https://www.image-net.org

[10] Google, “TensorFlow (version 2.16),” Google, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.tensorflow.org

[11] T. Brown, B. Mann, N. Ryder et al., “Language models are few-shot learners,” arXiv, arXiv:2005.14165, May 2020. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165`

This mixed list shows how different source types coexist on a single page, all ordered by first appearance in the text. These are realistic examples of examples of IEEE reference page example formatting you can mirror in your own work.

Common mistakes students make with IEEE reference page examples

Looking at the best examples is helpful, but it’s just as useful to know what not to copy.

Some recurring issues:

• Alphabetizing the list instead of ordering by first citation in the text. IEEE is numeric, not alphabetical.
• Using author–date in-text citations (like APA) instead of numbers in brackets. IEEE wants [3], not (Smith, 2023).
• Dropping DOIs for journal and conference papers even when they’re available. Strong examples of IEEE reference page example entries almost always include DOIs.
• Forgetting access dates for web sources. IEEE still expects an “Accessed” line for online material that can change.
• Mixing styles (APA, MLA, Chicago) because citation managers weren’t configured correctly.

If your reference list does not look structurally similar to the real examples of examples of IEEE reference page example formats above, that’s a red flag.

Where to verify IEEE reference examples (2024–2025)

Citation guides change over time, and professors can be picky. Once you’ve drafted your references using the examples here, cross‑check them against an authoritative source.

Reliable places to verify an example of an IEEE reference page example:

• The official IEEE Reference Guide (PDF) on ieee.org
• University writing centers that publish IEEE guides, such as many U.S. engineering schools
• Libraries at major universities, which often maintain updated IEEE quick guides

For broader academic integrity and citation advice, the following are worth bookmarking:

• Harvard College Writing Center: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework resources: https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework
• CDC COVID‑19 science briefs: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs.html

Use these to sanity‑check any new source type you encounter that isn’t already covered by the best examples of IEEE reference page example formats in this guide.

FAQ: IEEE reference page examples

Q1. Where can I see more examples of IEEE reference page example entries online?

Look for IEEE‑style citation PDFs from engineering departments at major universities, especially U.S. schools with large EECS programs. Many post short guides with 1–2 examples of each source type, closely aligned with the official IEEE Reference Guide.

Q2. How do I format an example of an IEEE reference page example for a book?

Follow this pattern:

[#] A. A. Author, *Title of Book*, xth ed. City, State (if USA), Country: Publisher, Year.

So a real‑style example would be:

[12] S. Haykin, *Communication Systems*, 5th ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2009.

Q3. Do I need to include URLs for journal articles if I already have a DOI?

In IEEE style, the DOI is preferred. If a DOI is present, you normally do not need a URL. Most strong IEEE reference page examples for journals and conferences end with the DOI only.

Q4. Can I use citation managers to generate IEEE references, or should I copy these examples manually?

You can absolutely use tools like Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote with the IEEE style installed. But do not trust them blindly. Compare a few generated entries with the real examples of IEEE reference page example formats above and fix any inconsistencies.

Q5. How many references should I include in an IEEE paper?

There’s no fixed number. A short undergraduate lab report might have 6–12 references, while a full-length IEEE journal article can easily have 30–80. What matters is that each source is relevant and that every entry follows the same IEEE pattern, as in the examples included in this guide.