How to format your references using the City citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for City. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Alley, Richard B. 2002. “Climate Change. On Thickening Ice?” Science (New York, N.Y.) 295 (5554): 451–452.
A journal article with 2 authors
Kirch, Patrick V., and Warren D. Sharp. 2005. “Coral 230Th Dating of the Imposition of a Ritual Control Hierarchy in Precontact Hawaii.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 307 (5706): 102–104.
A journal article with 3 authors
Ainsworth, Shaaron, Vaughan Prain, and Russell Tytler. 2011. “Science Education. Drawing to Learn in Science.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 333 (6046): 1096–1097.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Multani, Dilbag S., Steven P. Briggs, Mark A. Chamberlin, Joshua J. Blakeslee, Angus S. Murphy, and Gurmukh S. Johal. 2003. “Loss of an MDR Transporter in Compact Stalks of Maize Br2 and Sorghum Dw3 Mutants.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 302 (5642): 81–84.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Westermeier, Reiner. 2004. Electrophoresis in Practice. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Wong, Ian, and Brian Evans, eds. 2008. Resource Allocation In Multiuser Multicarrier Wireless Systems. Boston, MA: Springer US.
A chapter in an edited book
Hernandez, Andres, Rachid Outbib, and Daniel Hissel. 2012. “Fault Diagnosis of PEM Fuel Cell.” In PEM Fuel Cells with Bio-Ethanol Processor Systems: A Multidisciplinary Study of Modelling, Simulation, Fault Diagnosis and Advanced Control, edited by Marta S. Basualdo, Diego Feroldi, and Rachid Outbib, 151–183. Green Energy and Technology. London: Springer.

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 City.

Blog post
Andrew, Danielle. 2016. “In Defence Of Racer Snakes – The Demons Of Planet Earth II (They’re Only After A Meal).” IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 1988. Summer Youth Jobs Program: Congressional Action Has Increased Emphasis on Remedial Education. HRD-88-118. 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
Haneef, Nuzhat J. 2009. “A Synthesized Conceptual Framework for the Design of User Interfaces of Interactive Information Products.” Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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
Baker, Peter. 2017. “President Backs A Plan to Curtail Legal Migration.” New York Times, August 2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Alley 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Alley 2002; Kirch and Sharp 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Kirch and Sharp 2005)
  • Three authors: (Ainsworth, Prain, and Tytler 2011)
  • 4 or more authors: (Multani et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleCity
AbbreviationCity
ISSN (print)1360-4813
ISSN (online)1470-3629
ScopeGeography, Planning and Development
Urban Studies

Other styles