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

Dolan, R. J. 2002. “Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 298(5596): 1191–94.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bengtson, Stefan, and Graham Budd. 2004. “Comment on ‘Small Bilaterian Fossils from 40 to 55 Million Years before the Cambrian.’” Science (New York, N.Y.) 306(5700): 1291; author reply 1291.

A journal article with 3 authors

Elsaesser, Heidi, Karsten Sauer, and David G. Brooks. 2009. “IL-21 Is Required to Control Chronic Viral Infection.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 324(5934): 1569–72.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Johnston, Robert J., Amanda C. Poholek, Daniel DiToro, Isharat Yusuf, Danelle Eto, Burton Barnett, Alexander L. Dent, Joe Craft, and Shane Crotty. 2009. “Bcl6 and Blimp-1 Are Reciprocal and Antagonistic Regulators of T Follicular Helper Cell Differentiation.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 325(5943): 1006–10.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chandrasekaran, Srinivasan. 2016. Health, Safety, and Environmental Management in Offshore and Petroleum Engineering. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

O’Donnell, John. 2006. Discrete Mathematics Using a Computer. 2nd ed. eds. Cordelia Hall and Rex Page. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Pamies-Juarez, Lluis, Frédérique Oggier, and Anwitaman Datta. 2013. “Data Insertion and Archiving in Erasure-Coding Based Large-Scale Storage Systems.” In Distributed Computing and Internet Technology: 9th International Conference, ICDCIT 2013, Bhubaneswar, India, February 5-8, 2013. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, eds. Chittaranjan Hota and Pradip K. Srimani. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 47–68.

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

O`Callaghan, Jonathan. 2016. “Hyperloop One Performs First Test Of Groundbreaking Technology.” IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/hyperloop-one-performs-first-test-groundbreaking-technology/ (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. 1983. [Suitability of the MUMPS Language for Government Agencies]. 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

Theisen, Teresa D. 2008. “Improving the Collaboration Infrastructure of an Online Inter -Institutional Consortium.” Doctoral dissertation. Capella 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

Rothenberg, Ben. 2017. “Australian Persists in Chase for Elusive Title.” New York Times: SP2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dolan 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Bengtson and Budd 2004; Dolan 2002).

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

Two authors: (Bengtson and Budd 2004)
Three authors: (Elsaesser, Sauer, and Brooks 2009)
4 or more authors: (Johnston et al. 2009)

About the journal

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