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

Pan, Jiahua. 2009. “China Expects Leadership from Rich Nations.” Nature 461 (7267): 1055.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rowan, L., and R. Coontz. 2002. “Great Balls of Fire. Star Formation: A Web Supplement.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 295 (5552): 63.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dunn, Elizabeth W., Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton. 2008. “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 319 (5870): 1687–1688.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Tan, Hanno L., Sabina Kupershmidt, Rong Zhang, Svetlana Stepanovic, Dan M. Roden, Arthur A. M. Wilde, Mark E. Anderson, and Jeffrey R. Balser. 2002. “A Calcium Sensor in the Sodium Channel Modulates Cardiac Excitability.” Nature 415 (6870): 442–447.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chappell, David. 2008. Parris’s Standard Form of Building Contract. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd.

An edited book

Landoni, Giovanni, Laura Ruggeri, and Alberto Zangrillo, eds. 2014. Reducing Mortality in the Perioperative Period. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Julian, Stephen R. 2015. “Quantum Oscillation Measurements Applied to Strongly Correlated Electron Systems.” In Strongly Correlated Systems: Experimental Techniques, edited by Adolfo Avella and Ferdinando Mancini, 137–172. Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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

O`Callaghan, Jonathan. 2017. “The World’s Most Sensitive Search For Dark Matter Is Up And Running.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-worlds-most-sensitive-search-for-dark-matter-is-up-and-running/.

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. 1992. Air Traffic Control: Status of FAA’s Modernization Program. RCED-92-136BR. 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

Galvan, Raquel. 2015. “A Mixed-Methods Study of Mathematics and Science Achievement of Refugee Students in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Groups.” Doctoral dissertation, Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Stewart, James B. 2017. “For Some C.E.O.s, a Trump Invitation Is Risky Business.” New York Times, February 16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pan 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Pan 2009; Rowan and Coontz 2002).

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

Two authors: (Rowan and Coontz 2002)
Three authors: (Dunn, Aknin, and Norton 2008)
4 or more authors: (Tan 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