How to format your references using the Political Studies citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Political Studies. 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

Ernst, T. (2013) ‘Engineering. Controlling the polarity of silicon nanowire transistors’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 340(6139), 1414–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bagnall, M. W. and McLean, D. L. (2014) ‘Modular organization of axial microcircuits in zebrafish’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6167), 197–200.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rockman, M. V., Skrovanek, S. S. and Kruglyak, L. (2010) ‘Selection at linked sites shapes heritable phenotypic variation in C. elegans’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6002), 372–6.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Jacobs, K., Zaziski, D., Scher, E. C., Herhold, A. B. and Paul Alivisatos, A. (2001) ‘Activation volumes for solid-solid transformations in nanocrystals’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5536), 1803–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

O’Malley, C. (2014) Bonds Without Borders. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Murgante, B., Gervasi, O., Iglesias, A., Taniar, D. and Apduhan, B. O. (eds.) (2011) Computational Science and Its Applications - ICCSA 2011: International Conference, Santander, Spain, June 20-23, 2011. Proceedings, Part I. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Peikert, C. (2009) ‘Some Recent Progress in Lattice-Based Cryptography’, in O. Reingold (ed.), Theory of Cryptography: 6th Theory of Cryptography Conference, TCC 2009, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 15-17, 2009. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 72–72.

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 Political Studies.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, August 4) Affectionate Orangutan Kisses Pregnant Woman’s Bump [online]. IFLScienceIFLScience. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/affectionate-orangutan-kisses-pregnant-woman/ [Accessed30 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 (1991) Aviation Acquisition: Further Changes Needed in FAA’s Management and Budgeting Practices ( No. RCED-91-159). 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

Newfang, D. A. (2017) A Historical Assessment of Asbestos Exposure, Abatement Methods and Containment Efficacy During Asbestos Containing Material Removal Activities at a Large Federal Facility. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa, 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

Greenhouse, L. (2015, July 4) ‘The Supreme Court and the Politics of Fear’, New York Times, SR6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ernst, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Bagnall and McLean, 2014; Ernst, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Bagnall and McLean, 2014)
Three authors: (Rockman, Skrovanek, and Kruglyak, 2010)
6 or more authors: (Jacobs, Zaziski, Scher, Herhold, and Paul Alivisatos, 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Political Studies
Abbreviation	Polit. Stud.
ISSN (print)	0032-3217
ISSN (online)	1467-9248
Scope	Sociology and Political Science