How to format your references using the Mathematical Social Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mathematical Social Sciences. 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
Abbott, A., 2003. Chicken flu races through Dutch poultry farms. Nature 422, 247.
A journal article with 2 authors
Li, R., Wang, Y., 2013. Neural mechanism for sensing fast motion in dim light. Sci. Rep. 3, 3159.
A journal article with 3 authors
Hauf, S., Waizenegger, I.C., Peters, J.M., 2001. Cohesin cleavage by separase required for anaphase and cytokinesis in human cells. Science 293, 1320–1323.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Omiatek, D.M., Bressler, A.J., Cans, A.-S., Andrews, A.M., Heien, M.L., Ewing, A.G., 2013. The real catecholamine content of secretory vesicles in the CNS revealed by electrochemical cytometry. Sci. Rep. 3, 1447.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Stoker, J.J., 1988. Differential Geometry. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Pande, A., 2013. Embedded Multimedia Security Systems: Algorithms and Architectures. Springer, London.
A chapter in an edited book
Guo, S., 2013. The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Procedures and Liu Hui’s Mathematical Theory, in: Knobloch, E., Komatsu, H., Liu, D. (Eds.), Seki, Founder of Modern Mathematics in Japan: A Commemoration on His Tercentenary. Springer Japan, Tokyo, pp. 63–88.

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 Mathematical Social Sciences.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2016. How We Caught A Black Hole Emitting Intense Wind [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/how-we-caught-black-hole-emitting-intense-wind/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1989. Supplemental Student Loans: Who Borrows and Who Defaults (No. HRD-90-33FS). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Grant, J.A., 2015. Far-field noise from a rotor in a wind tunnel (Doctoral dissertation). Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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
Sisario, B., 2017. Bill Murray’s Latest Surprise Career Turn. New York Times C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Abbott, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Abbott, 2003; Li and Wang, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Li and Wang, 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Omiatek et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleMathematical Social Sciences
AbbreviationMath. Soc. Sci.
ISSN (print)0165-4896
ScopeStatistics, Probability and Uncertainty
General Psychology
General Social Sciences
Sociology and Political Science

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