How to format your references using the Social Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social Sciences. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Weertman, J.R. Materials Science. Retaining the Nano in Nanocrystalline Alloys. Science 2012, 337, 921–922.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rohrbach, A.; Schmidt, M.W. Redox Freezing and Melting in the Earth’s Deep Mantle Resulting from Carbon-Iron Redox Coupling. Nature 2011, 472, 209–212.

A journal article with 3 authors

Randau, L.; Schröder, I.; Söll, D. Life without RNase P. Nature 2008, 453, 120–123.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Imre, A.; Csaba, G.; Ji, L.; Orlov, A.; Bernstein, G.H.; Porod, W. Majority Logic Gate for Magnetic Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata. Science 2006, 311, 205–208.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sestina, J.E. Planning a Successful Future; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ, 2016; ISBN 9781119070702.

An edited book

Shoniregun, C.A. Securing Biometrics Applications; Crosier, S., Ed.; Springer US: Boston, MA, 2008; ISBN 9780387699325.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu, G.; Xie, R.; Sun, Y. Research and Analyses on Unsteady Heat Transfer of Inner Thermal Insulation Wall during Multi-Temperature Refrigerated Transportation. In Intelligent Computing and Information Science: International Conference, ICICIS 2011, Chongqing, China, January 8-9, 2011. Proceedings, Part II; Chen, R., Ed.; Communications in Computer and Information Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011; pp. 23–29 ISBN 9783642181337.

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 Social Sciences.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. Jupiter Is Even More Weird And Wonderful Than We Thought Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/space/jupiter-is-even-more-weird-and-wonderful-than-we-thought/ (accessed on 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 Computer Procurement: FAA’s $1.5-Billion Computer Resources Nucleus Project; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1989;

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Seitz, A.E. Epidemiology, Spatial Distribution, and Treatment Patterns of Blastomycosis in the United States. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University: Washington, DC, 2015.

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

Packer, G. Spheres of Influence. New York Times 2010, BR12.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Social Sciences
Abbreviation	Soc. Sci. (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2076-0760
Scope