How to format your references using the Contemporary Arab Affairs citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Contemporary Arab Affairs. 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
Dobson, Andrew P. 2005. “Virology. What Links Bats to Emerging Infectious Diseases?” Science (New York, N.Y.) 310 (5748): 628–629.
A journal article with 2 authors
Lea, Amanda M., and Michael J. Ryan. 2015. “SEXUAL SELECTION. Irrationality in Mate Choice Revealed by Túngara Frogs.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 349 (6251): 964–966.
A journal article with 3 authors
Katsanis, S. H., G. Javitt, and K. Hudson. 2008. “Public Health. A Case Study of Personalized Medicine.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 320 (5872): 53–54.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Iess, L., W. M. Folkner, D. Durante, M. Parisi, Y. Kaspi, E. Galanti, T. Guillot, et al. 2018. “Measurement of Jupiter’s Asymmetric Gravity Field.” Nature 555 (7695): 220–222.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Stephanie Hammer. 2013. Architects of Electronic Trading. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Gupta, Jatinder N. D. 2006. Intelligent Decision-Making Support Systems: Foundations, Applications and Challenges. Edited by Guisseppi A. Forgionne and Manuel Mora T. Decision Engineering. London: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Rahmandoust, Moones, and Majid R. Ayatollahi. 2016. “CNT-Based Nanocomposites.” In Characterization of Carbon Nanotube Based Composites under Consideration of Defects, edited by Majid R. Ayatollahi, 117–175. Advanced Structured Materials. 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 Contemporary Arab Affairs.

Blog post
Carpineti, Alfredo. 2016. “New Photo Shows The Dark Side Of Pluto.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-photo-shows-the-dark-side-of-pluto/.

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. 2006. Information Technology: Status and Challenges of Employee Exchange Program. GAO-07-216. 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
Wasserman, Melissa M. 2017. “Psychological Symptoms, Family Functioning, and Religious Coping in Second- and Third-Generation Holocaust Survivors.” Doctoral dissertation, Malibu, CA: Pepperdine 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
McMORROW, Ryan, and Michael Forsythe. 2017. “Chinese Tech Tycoon to Leave Troubled Company.” New York Times, July 6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dobson 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Dobson 2005; Lea and Ryan 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Lea and Ryan 2015)
  • Three authors: (Katsanis, Javitt, and Hudson 2008)
  • 4 or more authors: (Iess et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleContemporary Arab Affairs
AbbreviationContemp. Arab Aff.
ISSN (print)1755-0912
ISSN (online)1755-0920
ScopeCultural Studies
Political Science and International Relations

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