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

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

Buchanan, Mark. 2002. “A Game of Chance.” Nature 419 (6909): 787.

A journal article with 2 authors

Van Roy, Peter, and Derek E. G. Briggs. 2011. “A Giant Ordovician Anomalocaridid.” Nature 473 (7348): 510–513.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lorsch, Jon R., Francis S. Collins, and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz. 2014. “Cell Biology. Fixing Problems with Cell Lines.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 346 (6216): 1452–1453.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Chaimanee, Yaowalak, Varavudh Suteethorn, Pratueng Jintasakul, Chavalit Vidthayanon, Bernard Marandat, and Jean-Jacques Jaeger. 2004. “A New Orang-Utan Relative from the Late Miocene of Thailand.” Nature 427 (6973): 439–441.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zhang, Bo, and Dongyuan Qiu. 2014. Sneak Circuits of Power Electronic Converters. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Le Prell, Colleen G., Edward Lobarinas, Arthur N. Popper, and Richard R. Fay, eds. 2016. Translational Research in Audiology, Neurotology, and the Hearing Sciences. Vol. 58. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Werth, Güther, Viorica N. Gheorghe, and Fouad G. Major. 2009. “Microwave Spectroscopy.” In Charged Particle Traps II: Applications, edited by Viorica N. Gheorghe and Fouad G. Major, 85–128. Springer Series on Atomic, Optical, and Plasma Physics. 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 Contemporary African Studies.

Blog post

Hale, Tom. 2016. “This Hopping Robot Is As Cool As The Desert Rodent That Inspired It.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/this-hopping-robot-is-as-cool-as-the-desert-rodent-that-inspired-it/.

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. 2009. Federal-Aid Highways: FHWA Has Improved Its Risk Management Approach, but Needs to Improve Its Oversight of Project Costs. GAO-09-751. 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

Cabrales, Miguel. 2010. “Gupta Rajpoot Scheme for Quark Flavor Mixing.” Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Greenhouse, Linda. 2008. “Justices Broaden Immunity For Officers.” New York Times, January 23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Buchanan 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Buchanan 2002; Van Roy and Briggs 2011).

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

Two authors: (Van Roy and Briggs 2011)
Three authors: (Lorsch, Collins, and Lippincott-Schwartz 2014)
4 or more authors: (Chaimanee et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Contemporary African Studies
Abbreviation	J. Contemp. Afr. Stud.
ISSN (print)	0258-9001
ISSN (online)	1469-9397
Scope	Development Geography, Planning and Development Political Science and International Relations