How to format your references using the Government and Opposition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Government and Opposition. 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	Download the output style file
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

Melton L (2004) Protein Arrays: Proteomics in Multiplex. Nature 429(6987), 101–107.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barkana R and Loeb A (2003) Spectral Signature of Cosmological Infall of Gas around the First Quasars. Nature 421(6921), 341–343.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen C, Bobisch CA and Ho W (2009) Visualization of Fermi’s Golden Rule through Imaging of Light Emission from Atomic Silver Chains. Science (New York, N.Y.) 325(5943), 981–985.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fu ZQ et al. (2007) A Type III Effector ADP-Ribosylates RNA-Binding Proteins and Quells Plant Immunity. Nature 447(7142), 284–288.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Robinson TR (2010) Genetics for Dummies®. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Clark Wortham S (ed.) (2013) Common Characteristics and Unique Qualities in Preschool Programs: Global Perspectives in Early Childhood Education. (Vol. 5). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Pickering S, McCulloch J and Wright-Neville D (2008) The Police. In J McCulloch and D Wright-Neville (eds.), Counter-Terrorism Policing: Community, Cohesion and Security. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 71–89.

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 Government and Opposition.

Blog post

Fang J (2015, May 28) Longer Migration Routes Led to Drab Female Warblers. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/longer-migration-routes-led-drab-female-warblers/ (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 (2013) Transportation Infrastructure: Limited Improvement in Bridge Conditions over the Past Decade, but Financial Challenges Remain. No. GAO-13-713T. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 13 June.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Rojas A (2010) ASD: A family approach curriculum. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Vecsey G (2011, September 10) Open Is Dominated By News of the Weird. New York Times, p. D4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Melton 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Barkana and Loeb 2003; Melton 2004).

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

Two authors: (Barkana and Loeb 2003)
Three or more authors: (Fu et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Government and Opposition
ISSN (print)	0017-257X
ISSN (online)	1477-7053
Scope