How to format your references using the American Sociological Review citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Sociological Review. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Peng, Changhui. 2011. “Focus on Quality, Not Just Quantity.” Nature 475(7356):267.

A journal article with 2 authors

Szalay, A., and J. Gray. 2001. “The World-Wide Telescope.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 293(5537):2037–40.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pierce, Stephanie E., Jennifer A. Clack, and John R. Hutchinson. 2012. “Three-Dimensional Limb Joint Mobility in the Early Tetrapod Ichthyostega.” Nature 486(7404):523–26.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Baughman, Joshua M., Fabiana Perocchi, Hany S. Girgis, Molly Plovanich, Casey A. Belcher-Timme, Yasemin Sancak, X. Robert Bao, Laura Strittmatter, Olga Goldberger, Roman L. Bogorad, Victor Koteliansky, and Vamsi K. Mootha. 2011. “Integrative Genomics Identifies MCU as an Essential Component of the Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter.” Nature 476(7360):341–45.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Gamenara, Daniela, Gustavo A. Seoane, Patricia Saenz-Méndez, and Pablo Domínguez de María. 2012. Redox Biocatalysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Mikulski, Jerzy, ed. 2012. Telematics in the Transport Environment: 12th International Conference on Transport Systems Telematics, TST 2012, Katowice-Ustroń, Poland, October 10–13, 2012. Selected Papers. Vol. 329. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Yen, Ju-Yi, and Marc Yor. 2013. “Paul Lévy’s Arcsine Laws.” Pp. 43–54 in Local Times and Excursion Theory for Brownian Motion: A Tale of Wiener and Itô Measures, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, edited by M. Yor. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for American Sociological Review.

Blog post

Hale, Tom. 2017. “A Mystery Space Object Will Cruise Past Earth Next Month.” IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 (https://www.iflscience.com/space/a-mystery-space-object-will-cruise-past-earth-next-month/).

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. 2010. Head Start: Undercover Testing Finds Fraud and Abuse at Selected Head Start Centers. GAO-10-1049. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Stevenson, Mildred. 2008. “A Change for the Future: Presidents and Deans Real and Ideal Leadership Practices at Community and Junior Colleges in Mississippi.” Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Atlas, James. 2017. “Headed for the Graveyard of Books.” New York Times, February 10, BR21.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Peng 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Peng 2011; Szalay and Gray 2001).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Szalay and Gray 2001)
Three authors: (Pierce, Clack, and Hutchinson 2012)
4 or more authors: (Baughman et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Sociological Review
Abbreviation	Am. Sociol. Rev.
ISSN (print)	0003-1224
Scope	Sociology and Political Science