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
Gee, H. (2015). Origin and evolution of vertebrates. Nature, 520(7548), 449.
A journal article with 2 authors
Macdonald, T. T., & Monteleone, G. (2005). Immunity, inflammation, and allergy in the gut. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5717), 1920–1925.
A journal article with 3 authors
Swain, M. R., Vasisht, G., & Tinetti, G. (2008). The presence of methane in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet. Nature, 452(7185), 329–331.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Bassett, S. E., Milne, G. A., Mitrovica, J. X., & Clark, P. U. (2005). Ice sheet and solid Earth influences on far-field sea-level histories. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5736), 925–928.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Kwartler, T. (2017). Text Mining in Practice with R. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Rivas, L. (2015). Detection and Typing Strategies for Pathogenic Escherichia coli (G. E. Mellor, K. Gobius, & N. Fegan, Eds.). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Seffah, A., & Metzker, E. (2009). ACUE Architecture and Components. In A. Seffah & E. Metzker (Eds.), Adoption-centric Usability Engineering: Systematic Deployment, Assessment and Improvement of Usability Methods in Software Engineering (pp. 59–71). 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
Hale, T. (2016, September 15). Theft Of DNA Samples Raises Questions On Ownership Of Genetic Information. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/theft-of-dna-samples-raises-questions-on-ownership-of-genetic-information/

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. (1977). Computer Operations and Data Processing Activities at the Social Security Administration (HRD-77-97). 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
Volkmer, J. E. (2010). The Cretaceous-Tertiary tectonic evolution of the Lhasa Terrane, Tibet [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona.

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
Crow, K. (2003, April 13). Warm Feelings on Bleecker Street For a Rough-and-Tumble Life. New York Times, 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gee, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Gee, 2015; Macdonald & Monteleone, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Macdonald & Monteleone, 2005)
  • Three authors: (Swain et al., 2008)
  • 6 or more authors: (Bassett et al., 2005)

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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