How to format your references using the Critical Studies in Media Communication citation style

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

Price, C. (2000). Evidence for a link between global lightning activity and upper tropospheric water vapour. Nature, 406(6793), 290–293.

A journal article with 2 authors

Roxburgh, S. H., & Mokany, K. (2007). Comment on “From plant traits to plant communities: a statistical mechanistic approach to biodiversity.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5830), 1425; author reply 1425.

A journal article with 3 authors

O’D Alexander, C. M., Boss, A. P., & Carlson, R. W. (2001). The early evolution of the inner solar system: a meteoritic perspective. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5527), 64–68.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Winckler, P., Lartigue, L., Giannone, G., De Giorgi, F., Ichas, F., Sibarita, J.-B., Lounis, B., & Cognet, L. (2013). Identification and super-resolution imaging of ligand-activated receptor dimers in live cells. Scientific Reports, 3, 2387.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Popkin, J. D. (2011). A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution. Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Eilks, I., & Hofstein, A. (Eds.). (2015). Relevant Chemistry Education: From Theory to Practice. SensePublishers.

A chapter in an edited book

Haddad, P., Gregory, M., & Wickramasinghe, N. (2014). Business Value of IT in Healthcare. In N. Wickramasinghe, L. Al-Hakim, C. Gonzalez, & J. Tan (Eds.), Lean Thinking for Healthcare (pp. 55–81). 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 Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, April 30). Astronomers Measure Exoplanet’s Day For The First Time. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-measure-exoplanet’s-day-first-time/

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. (1971). Airport Safety Inspection Program Needed To Improve Flight Safety of Civil Aircraft (B-164497(1)). 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

Lackey, G. M. (2015). The efficacy of using a natural soil additive for the establishment, survival and diversity of native prairie and spontaneously colonizing plant communities on unirrigated green roofs in a humid subtropical climate [Doctoral dissertation]. Mississippi State 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

Herrman, J. (2016, November 8). An Election Ill Timed for Media in Transition. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Price, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Price, 2000; Roxburgh & Mokany, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Roxburgh & Mokany, 2007)
Three authors: (O’D Alexander et al., 2001)
6 or more authors: (Winckler et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Critical Studies in Media Communication
Abbreviation	Crit. Stud. Media Commun.
ISSN (print)	1529-5036
ISSN (online)	1479-5809
Scope	Communication