How to format your references using the Res Publica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Res Publica. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Hänninen, Pekka. 2002. Light microscopy: beyond the diffraction limit. Nature 419: 802.
A journal article with 2 authors
Tedford, Richard H., and C. Richard Harington. 2003. An Arctic mammal fauna from the Early Pliocene of North America. Nature 425: 388–390.
A journal article with 3 authors
Verschuren, D., K. R. Laird, and B. F. Cumming. 2000. Rainfall and drought in equatorial east Africa during the past 1,100 years. Nature 403: 410–414.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Galletto, Roberto, Ichiro Amitani, Ronald J. Baskin, and Stephen C. Kowalczykowski. 2006. Direct observation of individual RecA filaments assembling on single DNA molecules. Nature 443: 875–878.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Shynk, John J. 2016. Mathematical Foundations for Linear Circuits and Systems in Engineering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Bratteli, Ola, Sergey Neshveyev, and Christian Skau, ed. 2006. Operator Algebras: The Abel Symposium 2004. Vol. 1. Abel Symposia. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Pettigrew, Simone, and Michelle I. Jongenelis. 2016. Promoting Public Health: Understanding the Limitations of Marketing Principles and the Need for Alternative Approaches. In Making a Difference Through Marketing: A Quest for Diverse Perspectives, ed. Carolin Plewa and Jodie Conduit, 61–72. Singapore: 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 Res Publica.

Blog post
Fang, Janet. 2014. Oldest Human Poop Tells Us What Neanderthals Ate. IFLScience. IFLScience. June 26.

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. 1991. Education’s Library: Actions Needed to Improve Its Usefulness. HRD-91-61. 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
Roche, William A. 2006. The Structure and Grounding of Epistemic Justification. Doctoral dissertation, Columbus, OH: Ohio State 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
Williams, John. 2017. Where Charlotte and Jane Meet. New York Times, July 28.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hänninen 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Hänninen 2002; Tedford and Harington 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Tedford and Harington 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Galletto et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal titleRes Publica
AbbreviationRes Publica
ISSN (print)1356-4765
ISSN (online)1572-8692
ScopePhilosophy
Law

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