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

Le Quéré, Corinne. 2009. “Journal Club. An Oceanographer Marvels at the Good Timing of Shrimp.” Nature 461(7267):1031.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kim, Baek Hyun, and Jae W. Kwon. 2014. “Plasmon-Assisted Radiolytic Energy Conversion in Aqueous Solutions.” Scientific Reports 4:5249.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dian, Brian C., Jasper R. Clarkson, and Timothy S. Zwier. 2004. “Direct Measurement of Energy Thresholds to Conformational Isomerization in Tryptamine.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 303(5661):1169–73.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Suzuki, Yukiya, Yusuke Nakano, Keisuke Mishiro, Toshinori Takagi, Kazuhiro Tsuruma, Mitsuhiro Nakamura, Shinichi Yoshimura, Masamitsu Shimazawa, and Hideaki Hara. 2013. “Involvement of Mincle and Syk in the Changes to Innate Immunity after Ischemic Stroke.” Scientific Reports 3:3177.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stocker, Alan A. 2006. Analog VLSI Circuits for the Perception of Visual Motion. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Herskovic, Valeria, H. Ulrich Hoppe, Marc Jansen, and Jürgen Ziegler, eds. 2012. Collaboration and Technology: 18th International Conference, CRIWG 2012 Raesfeld, Germany, September 16-19, 2012 Proceedings. Vol. 7493. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

García-Carpintero, Manuel. 2013. “Self-Conception: Sosa on De Se Thought.” Pp. 73–99 in Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa, edited by J. Turri. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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

Andrews, Robin. 2015. “The Enigmatic ‘Wheel of Giants’ Monument As Old As Stonehenge.” IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018.

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. 1997. DOD Aviator Positions: Training Requirements and Incentive Pay Could Be Reduced. NSIAD-97-60. 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

Pockross, Adam Freeman. 2010. “Campbell, Turner and Dog Training in Adam Freeman Pockross’s ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.’” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Pilon, Mary. 2012. “A Card-Counting Mix Of Blackjack, Bibles, Cash and Conscience.” New York Times, March 10, D3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Le Quéré 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Kim and Kwon 2014; Le Quéré 2009).

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

Two authors: (Kim and Kwon 2014)
Three authors: (Dian, Clarkson, and Zwier 2004)
4 or more authors: (Suzuki et al. 2013)

About the journal

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