How to format your references using the Public Choice citation style

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

Fan, X. (2003). Astronomy. Black holes at the cosmic dawn. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5620), 752–753.

A journal article with 2 authors

Stoeckle, M. Y., & Coffran, C. (2013). TreeParser-aided Klee diagrams display taxonomic clusters in DNA barcode and nuclear gene datasets. Scientific reports, 3, 2635.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hannon, J. B., Shenoy, V. B., & Schwarz, K. W. (2006). Anomalous spiral motion of steps near dislocations on silicon surfaces. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5791), 1266–1269.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Cui, L., Wang, P., Chen, X., Fang, Y., Zhang, Z., & Sun, M. (2014). Plasmon-driven dimerization via S-S chemical bond in an aqueous environment. Scientific reports, 4, 7221.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bauldry, W. C. (2009). Introduction to Real Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Haidle, M. N., Conard, N. J., & Bolus, M. (Eds.). (2016). The Nature of Culture: Based on an Interdisciplinary Symposium ‘The Nature of Culture’, Tübingen, Germany (1st ed. 2016.). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Larrañaga, P. (2013). The Role of Constitutionalism in Regulatory Governance. In L. J. Wintgens & A. D. Oliver-Lalana (Eds.), The Rationality and Justification of Legislation: Essays in Legisprudence (pp. 75–105). Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing.

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 Public Choice.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016, June 22). A Jaguar Was Shot Dead Shortly After An Olympic Ceremony In Brazil. 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. (2013). Information Technology: HUD Needs to Improve Key Project Management Practices for Its Modernization Efforts (No. GAO-13-455). 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

Coulibaly, I. (2017). Influence of Gender and Age on the Performance of a PBIS program: Quantitative Analysis of Secondary Data from a Midwestern Suburban Public Middle School (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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

Kelly, M. (1992, July 18). THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: In Hindsight; Texas-Size Failure. New York Times, p. 111.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fan 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Fan 2003; Stoeckle and Coffran 2013).

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

Two authors: (Stoeckle and Coffran 2013)
Three or more authors: (Cui et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Public Choice
Abbreviation	Public Choice
ISSN (print)	0048-5829
ISSN (online)	1573-7101
Scope	Economics and Econometrics Sociology and Political Science