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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of African Cultural 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:

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

Tanaka, Kenneth L. 2005. “Geology and Insolation-Driven Climatic History of Amazonian North Polar Materials on Mars.” Nature 437 (7061): 991–994.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hartl, F. Ulrich, and Manajit Hayer-Hartl. 2002. “Molecular Chaperones in the Cytosol: From Nascent Chain to Folded Protein.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 295 (5561): 1852–1858.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jacobson, M. Z., W. G. Colella, and D. M. Golden. 2005. “Cleaning the Air and Improving Health with Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicles.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 308 (5730): 1901–1905.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Li, Lin, Ranny Mathew Thomas, Hidetaka Suzuki, Jef K. De Brabander, Xiaodong Wang, and Patrick G. Harran. 2004. “A Small Molecule Smac Mimic Potentiates TRAIL- and TNFalpha-Mediated Cell Death.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 305 (5689): 1471–1474.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bernatz, Richard A. 2010. Fourier Series and Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Gomes, Jonas. 2015. From Fourier Analysis to Wavelets. Edited by Luiz Velho. 1st ed. 2015. Vol. 3. IMPA Monographs. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Rodrigues, T. B., and S. Cerdán. 2007. “1.4 The Cerebral Tricarboxylic Acid Cycles.” In Handbook of Neurochemistry and Molecular Neurobiology: Brain Energetics. Integration of Molecular and Cellular Processes, edited by Abel Lajtha, Gary E. Gibson, and Gerald A. Dienel, 63–91. Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 Cultural Studies.

Blog post

Luntz, Stephen. 2015. “Supernovae and Black Holes Clean Galaxies.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/supernovae-and-black-holes-clean-galaxies/.

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. 1992. Highway Trust Fund: Strategies for Safeguarding Highway Financing. RCED-92-245. 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

Locicero, Logan M. 2014. “The Effects of Vertical Casting Position in Reinforced Concrete.” Doctoral dissertation, Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana.

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

Bennhold, Katrin, and Michael J. de la MERCED. 2017. “Uber Leader, in Visit to London, Appeals to Regain Operating License.” New York Times, October 3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tanaka 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Tanaka 2005; Hartl and Hayer-Hartl 2002).

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

Two authors: (Hartl and Hayer-Hartl 2002)
Three authors: (Jacobson, Colella, and Golden 2005)
4 or more authors: (Li et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of African Cultural Studies
Abbreviation	J. Afr. Cult. Stud.
ISSN (print)	1369-6815
ISSN (online)	1469-9346
Scope	Language and Linguistics Literature and Literary Theory Music Visual Arts and Performing Arts Linguistics and Language Cultural Studies