How to format your references using the Policy Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Policy 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Weinberger, A. J. (2002). Planetary disks. A dusty business. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5562), 2027–2028.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, S., & Wang, J. (2014). A compact trench-assisted multi-orbital-angular-momentum multi-ring fiber for ultrahigh-density space-division multiplexing (19 rings × 22 modes). Scientific reports, 4, 3853.

A journal article with 3 authors

Moreno, M., Rosenau, M., & Oncken, O. (2010). 2010 Maule earthquake slip correlates with pre-seismic locking of Andean subduction zone. Nature, 467(7312), 198–202.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Koten, J. W., Jr, Wood, G., Hagoort, P., Goebel, R., Propping, P., Willmes, K., & Boomsma, D. I. (2009). Genetic contribution to variation in cognitive function: an FMRI study in twins. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5922), 1737–1740.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mory, M. (2013). Fluid Mechanics for Chemical Engineering. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Passiante, G. (Ed.). (2010). Evolving Towards the Internetworked Enterprise: Technological and Organizational Perspectives. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Heiberger, R. M., & Neuwirth, E. (2009). Normal and t Distributions. In E. Neuwirth (Ed.), R Through Excel: A Spreadsheet Interface for Statistics, Data Analysis, and Graphics (pp. 61–80). New York, NY: Springer.

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 Policy Sciences.

Blog post

Evans, K. (2016, July 22). Scientifically Proven Features Men Find Attractive In Women. IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (1988). ADP Modernization: FCC’s Automation Planning Is Inadequate (No. IMTEC-88-51). 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

Collins, J. D. (2012). Answers in diagenesis: Assessing mussel shell diagenesis in the modern vadose zone at Lyon’s Bluff (22OK520), northeast Mississippi (Doctoral dissertation). Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

Cooper, M. (2017, July 7). Come Hell or High Water. 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 (Weinberger 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Li and Wang 2014; Weinberger 2002).

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

Two authors: (Li and Wang 2014)
Three or more authors: (Koten et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Policy Sciences
Abbreviation	Policy Sci.
ISSN (print)	0032-2687
ISSN (online)	1573-0891
Scope	Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law General Social Sciences Development Sociology and Political Science Public Administration