How to format your references using the Critical African Studies citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Critical African Studies. 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

Brooks, Benjamin A. 2012. “Geophysics. Seeing Is Believing.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 338 (6104): 207–208.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mehl, Garrett, and Alain Labrique. 2014. “Prioritizing Integrated MHealth Strategies for Universal Health Coverage.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 345 (6202): 1284–1287.

A journal article with 3 authors

Berné, Olivier, Núria Marcelino, and José Cernicharo. 2010. “Waves on the Surface of the Orion Molecular Cloud.” Nature 466 (7309): 947–949.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Pérez-Sieira, S., M. López, R. Nogueiras, and S. Tovar. 2014. “Regulation of NR4A by Nutritional Status, Gender, Postnatal Development and Hormonal Deficiency.” Scientific Reports 4 (March): 4264.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Luther, George W., III. 2016. Inorganic Chemistry for Geochemistry and Environmental Sciences. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Saito, Kozo, Akihiko Ito, Yuji Nakamura, and Kazunori Kuwana, eds. 2015. Progress in Scale Modeling, Volume II: Selections from the International Symposia on Scale Modeling, ISSM VI (2009) and ISSM VII (2013). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Cao, Ying, Paul Leroux, and Michiel Steyaert. 2015. “Radiation Hardened Bandgap References.” In Radiation-Tolerant Delta-Sigma Time-to-Digital Converters, edited by Paul Leroux and Michiel Steyaert, 69–80. Analog Circuits and Signal Processing. 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 Critical African Studies.

Blog post

Hale, Tom. 2017. “The World’s Finest 3D-Printed Foot-Bridge Graces A Park In Madrid.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/the-worlds-finest-3dprinted-footbridge-graces-a-park-in-madrid/.

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. 2011. Department of Energy: Advanced Technology Vehicle Loan Program Implementation Is Under Way, but Enhanced Technical Oversight and Performance Measures Are Needed. GAO-11-145. 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

Hammarsten, Carl. 2015. “Decorated Heegaard Diagrams and Combinatorial Heegaard Floer Homology.” Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington 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

Mele, Christopher, and Matt Stevens. 2017. “Bruce Hampton, 70, Jam-Band Patriarch.” New York Times, May 3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brooks 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Brooks 2012; Mehl and Labrique 2014).

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

Two authors: (Mehl and Labrique 2014)
Three authors: (Berné, Marcelino, and Cernicharo 2010)
4 or more authors: (Pérez-Sieira et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Critical African Studies
Abbreviation	Crit. Afr. Stud.
ISSN (print)	2168-1392
ISSN (online)	2040-7211
Scope	General Arts and Humanities General Social Sciences