How to format your references using the Contemporary Social Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Contemporary Social Science. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Yu, H. (2000). Et in articulo mortis. Nature, 405(6782), 21.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bays, P. M., & Husain, M. (2008). Dynamic shifts of limited working memory resources in human vision. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5890), 851–854.

A journal article with 3 authors

Raxworthy, C. J., Forstner, M. R. J., & Nussbaum, R. A. (2002). Chameleon radiation by oceanic dispersal. Nature, 415(6873), 784–787.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Fontaine, S., Barot, S., Barré, P., Bdioui, N., Mary, B., & Rumpel, C. (2007). Stability of organic carbon in deep soil layers controlled by fresh carbon supply. Nature, 450(7167), 277–280.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Levy, G., & Levin, B. (2014). The Biostatistics of Aging. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Guerrero, A., & Piasecki, M. (Eds.). (2008). Problem-Based Behavioral Science and Psychiatry. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Beziau, J.-Y., & Franceschetto, A. (2015). Strong Three-Valued Paraconsistent Logics. In J.-Y. Beziau, M. Chakraborty, & S. Dutta (Eds.), New Directions in Paraconsistent Logic: 5th WCP, Kolkata, India, February 2014 (pp. 131–145). Springer India.

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 Social Science.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016, July 15). Our Ancestors Were Carnivorous Super-Predators, So Do We Really Have A Choice About Eating Meat? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/our-ancestors-were-carnivorous-super-predators-so-do-we-really-have-a-choice-about-eating-meat/

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. (2012). Intelligent Transportation Systems: Improved DOT Collaboration and Communication Could Enhance the Use of Technology to Manage Congestion (GAO-12-308). 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

Wilson, M. W. (2012). Angels in Tinseltown: Health insurance, hormone use, and HIV among transgender women in Los Angeles [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Barron, J. (2017, April 12). Mystery of the Hamilton Painting at City Hall: Lost, Stolen or Never There? New York Times, A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Yu, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Bays & Husain, 2008; Yu, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Bays & Husain, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Fontaine et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Contemporary Social Science
Abbreviation	Contemp. Soc. Sci.
ISSN (print)	2158-2041
ISSN (online)	2158-205X
Scope	History General Social Sciences