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

Boyd, R. (2006). Evolution. The puzzle of human sociality. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314(5805), 1555–1556.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yeates, T. O., & Beeby, M. (2006). Biochemistry. Proteins in a small world. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314(5807), 1882–1883.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pullium, J. K., Roble, G. S., & Raymond, M. A. (2014). Emergency planning: Be prepared. Nature, 514(7523), 430.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hobson, J. P., Rosenfeldt, H. M., Barak, L. S., Olivera, A., Poulton, S., Caron, M. G., et al. (2001). Role of the sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor EDG-1 in PDGF-induced cell motility. Science (New York, N.Y.), 291(5509), 1800–1803.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reiman, J. (2012). As Free and as Just as Possible. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Xi, L., & Serebrovskaya, T. V. (Eds.). (2012). Intermittent Hypoxia and Human Diseases. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, J., He, H., Cao, Y., Xu, J., & Zhao, D. (2012). A Hierarchical Neural Network Architecture for Classification. In Jun Wang, G. G. Yen, & M. M. Polycarpou (Eds.), Advances in Neural Networks – ISNN 2012: 9th International Symposium on Neural Networks, Shenyang, China, July 11-14, 2012. Proceedings, Part I (pp. 37–46). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Public Choice.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, May 7). An Artificial Pancreas Has Just Made Giving Birth Safer For Diabetic 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. (2008). Highway Safety: Preliminary Observations on Efforts to Implement Changes in the Highway Safety Improvement Program Since SAFETEA-LU (No. GAO-08-1015T). 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

Hasbini, M. A. (2017). The Great Recession of 2007 and the Housing Market Crash: Why Did So Many Builders Fail? Lessons for the Local Homebuilding Industry (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, p. SR6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Boyd 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Boyd 2006; Yeates and Beeby 2006).

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

Two authors: (Yeates and Beeby 2006)
Three or more authors: (Hobson et al. 2001)

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