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

Stringer, C. (2012). Palaeontology: The 100-year mystery of Piltdown Man. Nature, 492(7428), 177–179.

A journal article with 2 authors

Spaldin, N. A., & Fiebig, M. (2005). Materials science. The renaissance of magnetoelectric multiferroics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5733), 391–392.

A journal article with 3 authors

Benton, M. J., Wills, M. A., & Hitchin, R. (2000). Quality of the fossil record through time. Nature, 403(6769), 534–537.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Li, L., Gan, Z., McCartney, M. R., Liang, H., Yu, H., Gao, Y., Wang, J., & Smith, D. J. (2013). Atomic configurations at InAs partial dislocation cores associated with Z-shape faulted dipoles. Scientific Reports, 3, 3229.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mubarak, S. (2010). Construction Project Scheduling and Control. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Guarnieri, P. (Ed.). (2015). Decision Models in Engineering and Management. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Nouri, H. E., Driss, O. B., & Ghédira, K. (2015). A Holonic Multiagent Model Based on a Combined Genetic Algorithm─Tabu Search for the Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem. In J. Bajo, K. Hallenborg, P. Pawlewski, V. Botti, N. Sánchez-Pi, N. D. Duque Méndez, F. Lopes, & V. Julian (Eds.), Highlights of Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Sustainability - The PAAMS Collection: International Workshops of PAAMS 2015, Salamanca, Spain, June 3-4, 2015. Proceedings (pp. 43–54). 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 Social Science.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016, August 24). Scientists Kick-Start Brain Of Comatose Patient Using Ultrasound. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-kick-start-brain-comatose-patient-ultrasound/

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. (2000). Federal Communications Commission: Competitive Bidding Procedures (OGC-00-69). 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

McLean, M. R. (2010). Analyzing the relationship of geographic mobility and institutional prestige to career advancement of women in academic medicine pursuing midcareer-, senior-, or executive-level administrative positions: Implications for career advancement strategies [Doctoral dissertation]. 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

Grynbaum, M. M. (2017, June 10). Testimony By Comey Turns Into Ratings Gold. New York Times, A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stringer, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Spaldin & Fiebig, 2005; Stringer, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Spaldin & Fiebig, 2005)
Three authors: (Benton et al., 2000)
6 or more authors: (Li et al., 2013)

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