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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Bohannon, John. 2011. “The Science Hall of Fame.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 331 (6014): 143.
A journal article with 2 authors
Helliker, Brent R., and Suzanna L. Richter. 2008. “Subtropical to Boreal Convergence of Tree-Leaf Temperatures.” Nature 454 (7203): 511–514.
A journal article with 3 authors
Liu, Wendy W., Ofer Mazor, and Rachel I. Wilson. 2015. “Thermosensory Processing in the Drosophila Brain.” Nature 519 (7543): 353–357.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Gomez, Céline, Ertuğrul M. Ozbudak, Joshua Wunderlich, Diana Baumann, Julian Lewis, and Olivier Pourquié. 2008. “Control of Segment Number in Vertebrate Embryos.” Nature 454 (7202): 335–339.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ishiyama, John T. 2011. Comparative Politics. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
An edited book
Dössel, Olaf, and Wolfgang C. Schlegel, eds. 2009. World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, September 7 - 12, 2009, Munich, Germany: Vol. 25/3 Radiation Protection and Dosimetry, Biological Effects of Radiation. Vol. 25/3. IFMBE Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Krebs, Linda U. 2012. “Sexual Health During Cancer Treatment.” In Reproductive Health and Cancer in Adolescents and Young Adults, edited by Gwendolyn P. Quinn and Susan T. Vadaparampil, 61–76. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. 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 Journal of African Cultural Studies.

Blog post
Hale, Tom. 2015. “Farmers Stumble Across Mammoth Skeleton In Their Soybean Field.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/farmers-find-mammoth-skeleton-their-soybean-field/.

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. 2008. Applying Agreed-Upon Procedures: Fiscal Year 2008 Highway Trust Fund Excise Taxes. GAO-09-91R. 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
Lim, Lucy. 2010. “Dual-Class vs. Single-Class Firms: Information Environment.” Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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
Murphy, Mary J. O. 2015. “Weekend Entertainments From the Archives of The New York Times.” New York Times, June 5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bohannon 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Bohannon 2011; Helliker and Richter 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Helliker and Richter 2008)
  • Three authors: (Liu, Mazor, and Wilson 2015)
  • 4 or more authors: (Gomez et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of African Cultural Studies
AbbreviationJ. Afr. Cult. Stud.
ISSN (print)1369-6815
ISSN (online)1469-9346
ScopeLanguage and Linguistics
Literature and Literary Theory
Music
Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Linguistics and Language
Cultural Studies

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