How to format your references using the Forum: Qualitative Social Research (English) citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Forum: Qualitative Social Research (English) (FQS). 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

Blow, Nathan (2009). Systems biology: Playing by the rules. Nature, 460(7253), 417.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sagarin, R. & Micheli, F. (2001). Climate change in nontraditional data sets. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5543), 811.

A journal article with 3 authors

O’Connor, Daniel H.; Huber, Daniel & Svoboda, Karel (2009). Reverse engineering the mouse brain. Nature, 461(7266), 923–929.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Selli, Daniele; Baburin, Igor A.; Martoňák, Roman & Leoni, Stefano (2013). Novel metastable metallic and semiconducting germaniums. Scientific Reports, 3, 1466.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McGuiggan, Peter (2005). GPRS in Practice. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Jakus, Grega (2013). Concepts, Ontologies, and Knowledge Representation. (V. Milutinović, S. Omerović, & S. Tomažič, Eds.). New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Verweij, Marcel (2011). Case Description: The Pharmaceutical Industry and the AIDS Crisis. In Wim Dubbink, Luc van Liedekerke, & Henk van Luijk (Eds.), European Business Ethics Cases in Context: The Morality of Corporate Decision Making (pp. 33–45). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 Forum: Qualitative Social Research (English).

Blog post

Andrews, Robin (2015). World’s Ten Most Dangerous Volcanoes Identified, https://www.iflscience.com/environment/worlds-ten-most-dangerous-volcanoes-identified-new-list/ [Accessed: 30 October 2018].

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 (2005). Digital Television Transition: Issues Related to an Information Campaign Regarding the Transition (No. GAO-05-940R). 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

Poldervaart, Pamela Gueringer (2010). A qualitative study of nursing didactic programs: Novice nurses’ perception of competence, confidence, and retention (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Schmidt, Samantha (2016). In City Rich in History, Unusual Plan to Preserve Poet’s Home. New York Times, p. A24.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	Forum: Qualitative Social Research (English)
ISSN (print)	1438-5627
Scope