How to format your references using the Perspectives on Politics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Perspectives on Politics. 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

Donnelly, Peter. 2008. “Progress and Challenges in Genome-Wide Association Studies in Humans.” Nature 456(7223): 728–31.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cowen, Leah E., and Susan Lindquist. 2005. “Hsp90 Potentiates the Rapid Evolution of New Traits: Drug Resistance in Diverse Fungi.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 309(5744): 2185–89.

A journal article with 3 authors

Park, Hyokeun, Yulong Li, and Richard W. Tsien. 2012. “Influence of Synaptic Vesicle Position on Release Probability and Exocytotic Fusion Mode.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 335(6074): 1362–66.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Fan, Chao, Minrui Fan, Benjamin J. Orlando, Nathan M. Fastman, Jinru Zhang, Yan Xu, Melissa G. Chambers, et al. 2018. “X-Ray and Cryo-EM Structures of the Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter.” Nature 559(7715): 575–79.

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 Xuemei Wang. 2014. Chaos Analysis and Chaotic EMI Suppression of DC-DC Converters. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Hirsch, Francis. 2011. Peacocks and Associated Martingales, with Explicit Constructions. eds. Christophe Profeta, Bernard Roynette, and Marc Yor. Milano: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Walenstein, Andrew, Luke Deshotels, and Arun Lakhotia. 2012. “Program Structure-Based Feature Selection for Android Malware Analysis.” In Security and Privacy in Mobile Information and Communication Systems: 4th International Conference, MobiSec 2012, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany, June 25-26, 2012, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, eds. Andreas U. Schmidt, Giovanni Russello, Ioannis Krontiris, and Shiguo Lian. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 51–52.

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 Perspectives on Politics.

Blog post

Fang, Janet. 2015. “Nine Dwarf Galaxies Discovered Orbiting Around the Milky Way.” IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/nine-possible-dwarf-galaxies-discovered-orbiting-around-milky-way/ (October 30, 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. 1989. Desegregation Activities: Administration of Education Grant Funds at the Cleveland School District. 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

Skiold-Hanlin, Sarah. 2015. “Functional and Ecological Aspects of the Mucus Trails of the Freshwater Gastropod Elimia Potosiensis.” Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois 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

Walsh, Mary Williams. 2011. “Two Rulings Find Cuts In Pensions Permissible.” New York Times: B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Donnelly 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Cowen and Lindquist 2005; Donnelly 2008).

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

Two authors: (Cowen and Lindquist 2005)
Three authors: (Park, Li, and Tsien 2012)
4 or more authors: (Fan et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Perspectives on Politics
ISSN (print)	1537-5927
ISSN (online)	1541-0986
Scope	Political Science and International Relations