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

Knapp, Sandra. 2007. “Anthropology. Some like It Hot.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 315(5814): 946–47.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hattori, Motoyuki, and Eric Gouaux. 2012. “Molecular Mechanism of ATP Binding and Ion Channel Activation in P2X Receptors.” Nature 485(7397): 207–12.

A journal article with 3 authors

Weidinger, Michael, Palle Møller, and Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo. 2004. “The Lyman-Alpha Glow of Gas Falling into the Dark Matter Halo of a z = 3 Galaxy.” Nature 430(7003): 999–1001.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Xie, W. et al. 2000. “Humanized Xenobiotic Response in Mice Expressing Nuclear Receptor SXR.” Nature 406(6794): 435–39.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hunt-Ahmed, Karen. 2013. Contemporary Islamic Finance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Helfert, Markus et al., eds. 2015. 579 Smart Cities, Green Technologies, and Intelligent Transport Systems: 4th International Conference, SMARTGREENS 2015, and 1st International Conference VEHITS 2015, Lisbon, Portugal, May 20-22, 2015, Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Hwang, Wonmuk. 2015. “Biofilament Dynamics: Line-to-Rod-Level Descriptions.” In Multiscale Modeling in Biomechanics and Mechanobiology, eds. Suvranu De, Wonmuk Hwang, and Ellen Kuhl. London: Springer, 63–83.

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

Andrew, Danielle. 2016. “Study Finds Some Female Fish Evolve Bigger Brains When Males Have Bigger Genitals.” IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/study-finds-some-female-fish-evolve-bigger-brains-when-males-have-bigger-genitals/ (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. 1991. Freight Trucking: Promising Approach for Predicting Carriers’ Safety Risks. 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

Stitt, Carmen R. 2008. “Differences in Theoretical Constructs of Processing Health Information in Narrative Entertainment Television Messages.” Doctoral dissertation. University of Arizona.

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

Greenhouse, Linda. 2007. “JUSTICES SAY E.P.A. HAS POWER TO ACT ON HARMFUL GASES.” New York Times: A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Knapp 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Hattori and Gouaux 2012; Knapp 2007).

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

Two authors: (Hattori and Gouaux 2012)
Three authors: (Weidinger, Møller, and Fynbo 2004)
4 or more authors: (Xie et al. 2000)

About the journal

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

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