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

Humphries, C. (2011). Genetics: Profiling a shape-shifter. Nature, 480(7377), S50-1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fisher, C. R., & Girguis, P. (2007). Microbiology. A proteomic snapshot of life at a vent. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5809), 198–199.

A journal article with 3 authors

Marchevsky, M., Higgins, M. J., & Bhattacharya, S. (2001). Two coexisting vortex phases in the peak effect regime in a superconductor. Nature, 409(6820), 591–594.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Li, H., Wang, J., Mor, G., & Sklar, J. (2008). A neoplastic gene fusion mimics trans-splicing of RNAs in normal human cells. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5894), 1357–1361.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Moritz, F. G. (2013). Electromechanical Motion Systems. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Argamon, S., & Howard, N. (Eds.). (2009). Computational Methods for Counterterrorism. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Law, M., Carr, D. G., & Vogel, S. C. (2015). Materials for the Nuclear Energy Sector. In G. J. Kearley & V. K. Peterson (Eds.), Neutron Applications in Materials for Energy (pp. 61–82). Cham: 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

O`Callaghan, J. (2017, January 26). Juno Snaps Amazing Image Of Jupiter’s Little Red Spot. 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. (1998). Aviation Competition: Proposed Domestic Airline Alliances Raise Serious Issues (No. T-RCED-98-215). 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

Dimick, K. E. (2009). Response to Intervention research to practice: Exploring a school in transition—a case study (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Pilon, M., & Kolata, G. (2013, January 30). New to Most Fans, IGF-1 Has Long Been Banned as a Performance Enhancer. New York Times, p. B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Humphries 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Fisher and Girguis 2007; Humphries 2011).

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

Two authors: (Fisher and Girguis 2007)
Three or more authors: (Li et al. 2008)

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

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