How to format your references using the Language Policy citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Language Policy. 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
Wilson, W. D. (2002). Tech.Sight. Analyzing biomolecular interactions. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5562), 2103–2105.
A journal article with 2 authors
Sepúlveda, J., & Murray, C. (2014). The state of global health in 2014. Science (New York, N.Y.), 345(6202), 1275–1278.
A journal article with 3 authors
Martinez-Mateo, J., Elkouss, D., & Martin, V. (2013). Key reconciliation for high performance quantum key distribution. Scientific reports, 3, 1576.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Dessaud, E., Yang, L. L., Hill, K., Cox, B., Ulloa, F., Ribeiro, A., et al. (2007). Interpretation of the sonic hedgehog morphogen gradient by a temporal adaptation mechanism. Nature, 450(7170), 717–720.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Bruen, G. O. (2015). WHOIS Running the Internet. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Murray, K. F., & Horslen, S. (Eds.). (2014). Diseases of the Liver in Children: Evaluation and Management. New York, NY: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Malaque, C. M. S., Chaim, O. M., Entres, M., & Barbaro, K. C. (2016). Loxosceles and Loxoscelism: Biology, Venom, Envenomation, and Treatment. In P. Gopalakrishnakone, G. A. Corzo, M. E. de Lima, & E. Diego-García (Eds.), Spider Venoms (pp. 419–444). 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 Language Policy.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2016, May 6). Do You Even Lift? Why Lifting Weights Is More Important For Your Health Than You Think. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/do-you-even-lift-why-lifting-weights-more-important-your-health-you-think/. 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. (1996). Airport Privatization: Issues Related to the Sale of U.S. Commercial Airports (No. T-RCED-96-82). 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
Chotkevys, D. L. (2009). A grounded theory study to explore how nurses overcome barriers to spiritual care (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
Poniewozik, J. (2017, October 12). Chatter, in Hopes of Preventing Splatter. New York Times, p. C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wilson 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Sepúlveda and Murray 2014; Wilson 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Sepúlveda and Murray 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Dessaud et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal titleLanguage Policy
AbbreviationLang. Policy
ISSN (print)1568-4555
ISSN (online)1573-1863
ScopeLanguage and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Sociology and Political Science

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