How to Cite a Book in IEEE Format: Complete Guide

Citing a book in IEEE format is straightforward once you know the structure — but the exact rules differ depending on whether the book has a single author, multiple authors, an editor, or is a chapter within an edited volume. This guide covers every scenario with complete, ready-to-use examples.

IEEE Book Citation: Basic Structure

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

Field-by-Field Breakdown

Field	Rule	Example
Reference number	Sequential bracket	[1]
Authors	Initials then last name; «and» before last	S. M. Kay and R. A. Haykin
Book title	Italicized; title case	Statistical Signal Processing
Edition	Only if not the first; abbreviated	3rd ed.
City, State, Country	State abbreviation only for US cities	Hoboken, NJ, USA / London, U.K.
Publisher	Full publisher name	Prentice Hall
Year	Four-digit year	2021

Complete Examples by Case

Single author — first edition

[1] S. M. Kay, Fundamentals of Statistical Signal Processing: Estimation Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice Hall, 1993.

Two authors

[2] R. C. Dorf and R. H. Bishop, Modern Control Systems, 13th ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Pearson, 2017.

Three or more authors

[3] T. M. Cover, J. A. Thomas, and R. W. Yeung, Elements of Information Theory, 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley-Interscience, 2006.

Edited book (editor instead of author)

[4] A. D. Dempster, Ed., Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1988.

Chapter in an edited book

[5] P. Stoica and R. Moses, "Spectral analysis of signals," in Signal Processing Handbook, A. Poularikas, Ed. Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press, 2009, pp. 1121–1180.

For a chapter, the chapter title goes in quotation marks, «in» precedes the book title, and the editor’s name follows the book title with «Ed.» or «Eds.»

Online book (e-book with DOI)

[6] C. M. Bishop, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. New York, NY, USA: Springer, 2006. [Online]. Available: https://www.springer.com/book/9780387310732

Book in a series

[7] A. Papoulis and S. U. Pillai, Probability, Random Variables, and Stochastic Processes, 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill Series in Electrical Engineering). New York, NY, USA: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

Special Cases

Case	What changes	Example adjustment
No author listed	Start with title	Book Title, Ed. A. Editor. City: Publisher, Year.
Corporate/institutional author	Full organization name as author	IEEE, IEEE Standard for…, Year.
Translated book	Add translator after title	Title, trans. A. Translator. City: Publisher, Year.
Republished/reprint	Add original year in parentheses	Publisher, Year (orig. pub. XXXX).

Common Mistakes

• Not italicizing the book title — always italicize in IEEE
• Including the city for non-US publishers without the country — add country (U.K., Germany, etc.) for non-US locations
• Writing «1st edition» — first editions are never mentioned; only 2nd, 3rd, etc.
• Listing editors as authors — use «Ed.» or «Eds.» after the name, not as the first field
• Wrong author format: «Smith, J.» instead of «J. Smith»

IEEE Book vs. Journal Citation: Key Differences

Element	Book	Journal article
Title format	Italicized, title case, no quotes	Quoted, sentence case, not italicized
Publisher info	City, Country: Publisher, Year	Not included
Volume/issue	Not applicable (use edition)	vol. X, no. Y
Pages	Total pages not cited; chapter pages use pp.	pp. ZZZ–ZZZ required

For the full IEEE citation system — including conference papers, theses, and websites — see the IEEE Format Center.