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

Liechty, John. 2012. “Scientists and Bankers - a New Model Army.” Nature 484 (7393): 143.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hagan, John, and Alberto Palloni. 2006. “Social Science. Death in Darfur.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 313 (5793): 1578–1579.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zwaan, M. A., P. G. van Dokkum, and M. A. Verheijen. 2001. “Hydrogen 21-Centimeter Emission from a Galaxy at Cosmological Distance.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 293 (5536): 1800–1802.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Xiong, Wei, Yun Shen Zhou, Wen Jia Hou, Li Jia Jiang, Yang Gao, Li Sha Fan, Lan Jiang, Jean Francois Silvain, and Yong Feng Lu. 2014. “Direct Writing of Graphene Patterns on Insulating Substrates under Ambient Conditions.” Scientific Reports 4 (May): 4892.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Barbaroux, Pierre, Amel Attour, and Eric Schenk. 2016. Knowledge Management and Innovation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ystad, Sølvi, Richard Kronland-Martinet, and Kristoffer Jensen, eds. 2009. Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval. Genesis of Meaning in Sound and Music: 5th International Symposium, CMMR 2008 Copenhagen, Denmark, May 19-23, 2008 Revised Papers. Vol. 5493. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gal, John. 2010. “Exploring the Extended Family of Mediterranean Welfare States, or: Did Beveridge and Bismarck Take a Mediterranean Cruise Together?” In Children, Gender and Families in Mediterranean Welfare States, edited by Mimi Ajzenstadt and John Gal, 77–101. Children¿s Well-Being: Indicators and Research. 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 Contemporary African Studies.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, Jonathan. 2016. “Stephen Hawking’s Interstellar Mission To Alpha Centauri Gets Help From NASA To Deal With Radiation.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/stephen-hawking-interstellar-mission-alpha-centauri-nasa-radiation/.

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. 2004. Tax Policy: Historical Tax Treatment of INTELSAT and Current Tax Rules for Satellite Corporations. GAO-04-994. 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

Luna, Sandra Ceballos. 2010. “An Integrated Treatment Program for Individuals with Co-Occurring Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders: A Grant Proposal.” 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

Lee, Linda. 2013. “In Miami, a House Comes to Visit.” New York Times, December 5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Liechty 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Liechty 2012; Hagan and Palloni 2006).

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

Two authors: (Hagan and Palloni 2006)
Three authors: (Zwaan, van Dokkum, and Verheijen 2001)
4 or more authors: (Xiong et al. 2014)

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