How to format your references using the Journal of African American Studies citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of African American Studies. 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. (2003). Researchers rattled as Kyoto Protocol hangs in the balance. Nature, 423(6942), 792.
A journal article with 2 authors
Sun, J., & Liu, T. (2006). The age of the Taklimakan Desert. Science (New York, N.Y.), 312(5780), 1621.
A journal article with 3 authors
Pascalis, O., de Haan, M., & Nelson, C. A. (2002). Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life? Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5571), 1321–1323.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Hammond, S. M., Bernstein, E., Beach, D., & Hannon, G. J. (2000). An RNA-directed nuclease mediates post-transcriptional gene silencing in Drosophila cells. Nature, 404(6775), 293–296.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Wubbolding, R. E. (2017). Reality Therapy and Self-Evaluation. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.
An edited book
Gerencser, G. A. (Ed.). (2010). Epithelial Transport Physiology. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
A chapter in an edited book
Pont, M. J., Kurian, S., & Bautista-Quintero, R. (2009). Meeting Real-Time Constraints Using “Sandwich Delays.” In J. Noble & R. Johnson (Eds.), Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming I (pp. 94–102). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Journal of African American Studies.

Blog post
Andrew, D. (2017, January 27). Stimulating The Brain With Electricity May Reduce Bulimia Symptoms. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/stimulating-the-brain-with-electricity-may-reduce-bulimia-symptoms/. 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. (2016). Tribal Internet Access: Increased Federal Coordination and Performance Measurement Needed (No. GAO-16-504T). 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
Kovacev, R. J. (2008). Encouraging employee entrepreneurial spirit: A phenomenological case study of a large technology enterprise (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
Kelly, C. (2017, May 10). Vape Shops Fear Effects Of New F.D.A. Rules. New York Times, p. B5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schiermeier 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Schiermeier 2003; Sun and Liu 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Sun and Liu 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (Hammond et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of African American Studies
AbbreviationJ. Afr. Am. Stud. (New Brunsw.)
ISSN (print)1559-1646
ISSN (online)1936-4741
ScopeSociology and Political Science
Cultural Studies
Gender Studies

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