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

Williams, E. (2011) ‘Environmental effects of information and communications technologies’, Nature, 479(7373), 354–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Choi, W. and Peifer, M. (2011) ‘Cell biology. Arranging a cellular checkerboard’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6046), 1099–100.

A journal article with 3 authors

Moellering, E. R., Muthan, B. and Benning, C. (2010) ‘Freezing tolerance in plants requires lipid remodeling at the outer chloroplast membrane’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6001), 226–8.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Huang, Y.-W., Chen, W. T., Wu, P. C., Fedotov, V. A., Zheludev, N. I. and Tsai, D. P. (2013) ‘Toroidal lasing spaser’, Scientific reports, 3, 1237.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Maidl, B., Thewes, M. and Maidl, U. (2014) Handbook of Tunnel Engineering II. D-69451 Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH.

An edited book

Franco, L., Elizondo, D. A. and Jerez, J. M. (eds.) (2009) Constructive Neural Networks. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Rodriguez, V. L. and Davoudian, T. (2016) ‘Clinical Measurement of Pain, Opioid Addiction, and Functional Status’, in A. M. Matthews and J. C. Fellers (eds.), Treating Comorbid Opioid Use Disorder in Chronic Pain. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 47–56.

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

Davis, J. (2015, October 22) Pig-Like ‘Bacon Turtle’ Swam The Ancient Waterways Of Utah [online]. IFLScienceIFLScience. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/extinct-bacon-turtle-lived-ancient-waterways-utah/ [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 (2003) Aviation Security: Efforts to Measure Effectiveness and Strengthen Security Programs ( No. GAO-04-285T). 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

Lake, A. D. (2013) Hepatic stress response mechanisms in progressive human nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

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, M. W. (2011, July 1) ‘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 (Williams, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Choi and Peifer, 2011; Williams, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Choi and Peifer, 2011)
Three authors: (Moellering, Muthan, and Benning, 2010)
6 or more authors: (Huang et al., 2013)

About the journal

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

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