How to format your references using the Politikon citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Van Noorden, Richard. 2012. “Production: Beyond Sticky Tape.” Nature 483 (7389): S32-3.
A journal article with 2 authors
Zahn, Laura M., and John Travis. 2013. “Cancer Genomics. A Medical Renaissance? Introduction.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 339 (6127): 1539.
A journal article with 3 authors
Zhao, Jiuhua, Qipeng Liu, and Xiaofan Wang. 2014. “Competitive Dynamics on Complex Networks.” Scientific Reports 4 (July): 5858.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Tomari, Yukihide, Christian Matranga, Benjamin Haley, Natalia Martinez, and Phillip D. Zamore. 2004. “A Protein Sensor for SiRNA Asymmetry.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 306 (5700): 1377–1380.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Van Fleet, Patrick J. 2008. Discrete Wavelet Transformations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Huan, Qingzhi, ed. 2010. Eco-Socialism as Politics: Rebuilding the Basis of Our Modern Civilisation. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Hibino, Mitsuhiro, and Takeshi Yao. 2010. “γ-Ferric Oxide / Carbon Composite Synthesized by Aqueous Solution Method as a Cathode for Lithium-Ion Batteries.” In Zero-Carbon Energy Kyoto 2009, edited by Takeshi Yao, 31–38. Green Energy and Technology. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

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 Politikon.

Blog post
Andrew, Elise. 2014. “There Are Now Just Six Northern White Rhinos Left On Earth.” IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 1992. FBI: Advanced Communications Technologies Pose Wiretapping Challenges. IMTEC-92-68BR. 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
Nespoli, Giuseppe. 2017. “Impact of Supervisor Support on Employee Job Satisfaction Among Fundraising Staff Within Higher Education.” Doctoral dissertation, Malibu, CA: Pepperdine 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
Vaissié, Cécile. 2017. “Can Putin Influence the French Election?” New York Times, April 14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Van Noorden 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Van Noorden 2012; Zahn and Travis 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Zahn and Travis 2013)
  • Three authors: (Zhao, Liu, and Wang 2014)
  • 4 or more authors: (Tomari et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titlePolitikon
ISSN (print)0258-9346
ISSN (online)1470-1014
ScopeSociology and Political Science
Political Science and International Relations

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