How to format your references using the Contemporary Sociology citation style

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

You, Zhong. 2014. “Materials Design. Folding Structures out of Flat Materials.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 345(6197):623–24.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bollrath, Julia, and Fiona Powrie. 2013. “Immunology. Feed Your Tregs More Fiber.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 341(6145):463–64.

A journal article with 3 authors

Friedberg, Errol C., Robert Wagner, and Miroslav Radman. 2002. “Specialized DNA Polymerases, Cellular Survival, and the Genesis of Mutations.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 296(5573):1627–30.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Strigari, Louis E., James S. Bullock, Manoj Kaplinghat, Joshua D. Simon, Marla Geha, Beth Willman, and Matthew G. Walker. 2008. “A Common Mass Scale for Satellite Galaxies of the Milky Way.” Nature 454(7208):1096–97.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Nicholls, Dr Lindsey, Julie Cunningham Piergrossi, Carolina de Sena Gibertoni, and Margaret A. Daniel. 2013. Psychoanalytic Thinking in Occupational Therapy. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Bhattacharya, Niranjan, and Phillip G. Stubblefield, eds. 2016. Human Fetal Growth and Development: First and Second Trimesters. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Bellout, Hamid, and Frederick Bloom. 2014. “General Existence and Uniqueness Theorems for Incompressible Bipolar and Non-Newtonian Fluid Flow.” Pp. 239–345 in Incompressible Bipolar and Non-Newtonian Viscous Fluid Flow, edited by F. Bloom. 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 Sociology.

Blog post

Luntz, Stephen. 2015. “Scientists Produce Most Accurate Map Ever Of Mammoth Ranges.” IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 (https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mammoth-range-mammoth-revealed/).

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. 1989. Improvements Needed in DOT’s Hazardous Materials Rail Safety Program. T-RCED-90-13. 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

Willhite, David Grant. 2001. “Purification, Identification, and Partial Characterization of Proteins Associated with the Adaptive Immune Response to Soluble Protein Antigen in the American Cockroach (Periplaneta Americana).” Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH.

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

Sisario, Ben, and Sydney Ember. 2016. “Facing the Music.” New York Times, October 17, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (You 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Bollrath and Powrie 2013; You 2014).

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

Two authors: (Bollrath and Powrie 2013)
Three authors: (Friedberg, Wagner, and Radman 2002)
4 or more authors: (Strigari et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Contemporary Sociology
Abbreviation	Contemp. Sociol.
ISSN (print)	0094-3061
Scope	Sociology and Political Science