How to format your references using the Contemporary South Asia citation style

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

Thomas, Gavin H. 2015. “Evolution: An Avian Explosion.” Nature 526 (7574): 516–517.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frank, Steven A., and Martin A. Nowak. 2003. “Cell Biology: Developmental Predisposition to Cancer.” Nature 422 (6931): 494.

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu, Liang, Elaine Lai-Han Leung, and Xiaoying Tian. 2011. “Perspective: The Clinical Trial Barriers.” Nature 480 (7378): S100.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Riewald, Matthias, Ramona J. Petrovan, Aaron Donner, Barbara M. Mueller, and Wolfram Ruf. 2002. “Activation of Endothelial Cell Protease Activated Receptor 1 by the Protein C Pathway.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 296 (5574): 1880–1882.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ezra, Don, Bob Collie, and Matthew X. Smith. 2009. The Retirement Plan Solution. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Zavoral, Filip, Jason J. Jung, and Costin Badica, eds. 2014. Intelligent Distributed Computing VII: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing - IDC 2013, Prague, Czech Republic, September 2013. Vol. 511. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Omar, Hassan Aboubakr, and Weihua Zhuang. 2014. “Conclusions and Future Works.” In Time Division Multiple Access For Vehicular Communications, edited by Weihua Zhuang, 59–60. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. 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 South Asia.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2015. “Why Men Don’t Need To Be Screened For Breast Cancer, But Should Still Do Regular Checks.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-men-don-t-need-be-screened-breast-cancer-should-still-do-regular-checks/.

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. 1991. Federal Research: Small Business Innovation Research Program Shows Success But Could Be Strengthened. T-RCED-92-3. 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

Chatterjee, Kaushik. 2012. “A Probabilistic Mechanistic Approach for Assessing the Rupture Frequency of Small Modular Reactor Steam Generator Tubes Using Uncertain Inputs from In-Service Inspections.” Doctoral dissertation, College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Walsh, Mary Williams. 2012. “New Ideas On Pensions: Use States.” New York Times, March 27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Thomas 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Thomas 2015; Frank and Nowak 2003).

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

Two authors: (Frank and Nowak 2003)
Three authors: (Liu, Leung, and Tian 2011)
4 or more authors: (Riewald et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Contemporary South Asia
Abbreviation	Contemp. South Asia
ISSN (print)	0958-4935
ISSN (online)	1469-364X
Scope	Development Geography, Planning and Development Political Science and International Relations