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:

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
Schiermeier, Q. (2002). Maths adds up for Berlin centre. Nature, 420(6914), 348.
A journal article with 2 authors
Delbarco-Trillo, J., & Ferkin, M. H. (2004). Male mammals respond to a risk of sperm competition conveyed by odours of conspecific males. Nature, 431(7007), 446–449.
A journal article with 3 authors
Sinsabaugh, R. L., Hill, B. H., & Follstad Shah, J. J. (2009). Ecoenzymatic stoichiometry of microbial organic nutrient acquisition in soil and sediment. Nature, 462(7274), 795–798.
A journal article with 21 or more authors
Shen, X., Xiao, H., Ranallo, R., Wu, W.-H., & Wu, C. (2003). Modulation of ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling complexes by inositol polyphosphates. Science (New York, N.Y.), 299(5603), 112–114.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Armstrong, H. A., & Brasier, M. D. (2004). Microfossils. Blackwell Publishing.
An edited book
Moltó, A. (2009). A Nonlinear Transfer Technique for Renorming (J. Orihuela, S. Troyanski, & M. Valdivia, Eds.; Vol. 1951). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Rogers, E., Galkowski, K., & Owens, D. H. (2007). Robustness. In K. Galkowski & D. H. Owens (Eds.), Control Systems Theory and Applications for Linear Repetitive Processes (pp. 141–175). 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. (2015, May 14). New Rare Particle Decay Spotted. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/new-rare-particle-decay-spotted/

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. (2007). Passenger Rail Security: Enhanced Federal Leadership Needed to Prioritize and Guide Security Efforts (GAO-07-225T). 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
Cao, Y. (2006). Morphological and Functional Characterization of the Neurotransmitter GABA in Adult Rat Taste Buds [Doctoral dissertation]. Ohio 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
Koblin, J. (2017, June 29). AMC and Comcast to Offer A Commercial-Free Option. New York Times, B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schiermeier, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Delbarco-Trillo & Ferkin, 2004; Schiermeier, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Delbarco-Trillo & Ferkin, 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Shen et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleCritical Studies in Media Communication
AbbreviationCrit. Stud. Media Commun.
ISSN (print)1529-5036
ISSN (online)1479-5809
ScopeCommunication

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