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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Nee, Sean. 2004. “More than Meets the Eye.” Nature 429 (6994): 804–805.
A journal article with 2 authors
Milton, Amy L., and Barry J. Everitt. 2012. “Neuroscience. Wiping Drug Memories.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 336 (6078): 167–168.
A journal article with 3 authors
Grassly, Nicholas C., Christophe Fraser, and Geoffrey P. Garnett. 2005. “Host Immunity and Synchronized Epidemics of Syphilis across the United States.” Nature 433 (7024): 417–421.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Koshino, Hideya, Takehiro Minamoto, Ken Yaoi, Mariko Osaka, and Naoyuki Osaka. 2014. “Coactivation of the Default Mode Network Regions and Working Memory Network Regions during Task Preparation.” Scientific Reports 4 (August): 5954.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Evans, Robert. 2010. Seven Secrets of the Savvy School Leader. San Francisco, CA, USA: Jossey-Bass.
An edited book
Dalvit, Diego, Peter Milonni, David Roberts, and Felipe da Rosa, eds. 2011. Casimir Physics. Vol. 834. Lecture Notes in Physics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Mårtensson, Johan, and Rinaldo Bellomo. 2016. “Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy Versus Intermittent Haemodialysis: Impact on Clinical Outcomes.” In Reducing Mortality in Acute Kidney Injury, edited by Giovanni Landoni, Antonio Pisano, Alberto Zangrillo, and Rinaldo Bellomo, 43–49. 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
Carpineti, Alfredo. 2016. “Experiment Fails To Find Dark Matter After 20 Months Of Searching.” IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 1974. Need for a National Weather Modification Reseach Program. B-133202. 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
Hatcher, Rishona. 2012. “Guide to Improvisation for Mozart’s Serenade in Bb Major, K. 361, the ‘Gran Partita.’” Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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
Mueller, Benjamin, and Nate Schweber. 2015. “Brooklyn Fire Kills 7 Children, Worst Toll in City Since 2007.” New York Times, March 22.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nee 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Nee 2004; Milton and Everitt 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Milton and Everitt 2012)
  • Three authors: (Grassly, Fraser, and Garnett 2005)
  • 4 or more authors: (Koshino et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleContemporary South Asia
AbbreviationContemp. South Asia
ISSN (print)0958-4935
ISSN (online)1469-364X
ScopeDevelopment
Geography, Planning and Development
Political Science and International Relations

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