How to format your references using the Sociological Methodology citation style

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

Rubinsztein, David C. 2006. “The Roles of Intracellular Protein-Degradation Pathways in Neurodegeneration.” Nature 443(7113):780–86.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bridson, Robert, and Christopher Batty. 2010. “Computer Science. Computational Physics in Film.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 330(6012):1756–57.

A journal article with 3 authors

Malmgren, R. Dean, Julio M. Ottino, and Luís A. Nunes Amaral. 2010. “The Role of Mentorship in Protégé Performance.” Nature 465(7298):622–26.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhao, Wenxiu, Lei Jin, Hang Yuan, Zhiyang Tan, Changhua Zhou, Lin Song Li, and Lan Ma. 2013. “Targeting Human Embryonic Stem Cells with Quantum Dot-Conjugated Phages.” Scientific Reports 3:3134.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tsui, James Bao-Yen. 2004. Fundamentals of Global Positioning System Receivers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Rocca, Jorge, Carmen Menoni, and Mario Marconi, eds. 2016. X-Ray Lasers 2014: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on X-Ray Lasers. Vol. 169. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Eemeren, Frans, Bart Garssen, and Bert Meuffels. 2009. “The Confrontation Stage: The Freedom Rule.” Pp. 85–109 in Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness: Empirical Research Concerning the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Rules, Argumentation Library, edited by B. Garssen and B. Meuffels. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 Sociological Methodology.

Blog post

Carpineti, Alfredo. 2017. “NASA Spots Mysterious Flashes Of Light High In The Atmosphere.” IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 (https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-spots-mysterious-flashes-of-light-high-in-the-atmosphere/).

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. 1989. Implementation Status of the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986. T-RCED-89-47. 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

Bailey, Reginald U. 2015. “A Risk Analysis Tool for Evaluating ROI of TRA for Major Defense Acquisition Programs.” Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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, Linda. 2007. “Supreme Court Refuses Case Challenging Group’s Designation as Terrorists.” New York Times, January 9, A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rubinsztein 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bridson and Batty 2010; Rubinsztein 2006).

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

Two authors: (Bridson and Batty 2010)
Three authors: (Malmgren, Ottino, and Nunes Amaral 2010)
4 or more authors: (Zhao et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Sociological Methodology
Abbreviation	Sociol. Methodol.
ISSN (print)	0081-1750
Scope	Sociology and Political Science