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

Bromm, Volker. 2010. “Chemistry. To Cool or Not to Cool.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 329(5987):45–46.

A journal article with 2 authors

Steel, William H., and Robert A. Walker. 2003. “Measuring Dipolar Width across Liquid-Liquid Interfaces with ‘Molecular Rulers.’” Nature 424(6946):296–99.

A journal article with 3 authors

Peñuelas, Josep, This Rutishauser, and Iolanda Filella. 2009. “Ecology. Phenology Feedbacks on Climate Change.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 324(5929):887–88.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Gore, Athurva, Zhe Li, Ho-Lim Fung, Jessica E. Young, Suneet Agarwal, Jessica Antosiewicz-Bourget, Isabel Canto, Alessandra Giorgetti, Mason A. Israel, Evangelos Kiskinis, Je-Hyuk Lee, Yuin-Han Loh, Philip D. Manos, Nuria Montserrat, Athanasia D. Panopoulos, Sergio Ruiz, Melissa L. Wilbert, Junying Yu, Ewen F. Kirkness, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Derrick J. Rossi, James A. Thomson, Kevin Eggan, George Q. Daley, Lawrence S. B. Goldstein, and Kun Zhang. 2011. “Somatic Coding Mutations in Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.” Nature 471(7336):63–67.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sierra, Miguel A., María C. de la Torre, and Fernando P. Cossío. 2013. More Dead Ends and Detours. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Jimenez, Juan. 2016. Spectroscopic Analysis of Optoelectronic Semiconductors. Vol. 202. edited by J. W. Tomm. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Lee, Yeisun, Wonsang Youn, Jongwook Lim, Yongsik Nam, and Youngsik Kwak. 2009. “OpenTide China’s Pricing Decision-Making Support System 2.0 for Digital Industry in China.” Pp. 25–32 in U- and E-Service, Science and Technology: International Conference, UNESST 2009, Held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conference, FGIT 2009, Jeju Island, Korea, December 10-12, 2009. Proceedings, Communications in Computer and Information Science, edited by D. Ślęzak, T.-H. Kim, J. Ma, W.-C. Fang, F. E. Sandnes, B.-H. Kang, and B. Gu. 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 Sociological Methodology.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2015. “Why Poo Transplants Are Nothing To Be Sniffed At.” IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 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. 1993. European Transportation. NSIAD-94-66R. 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

Pobat, Michael. 2012. “It Is All in the Mind of the Manager—Using Cognitive Complexity to Explore the Global Mindset—A Comparative Case Study.” 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

Hollander, Sophia. 2000. “Kaukenas’s Magical Night Means Romp for Seton Hall.” New York Times, February 6, 84.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bromm 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Bromm 2010; Steel and Walker 2003).

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

Two authors: (Steel and Walker 2003)
Three authors: (Peñuelas, Rutishauser, and Filella 2009)
4 or more authors: (Gore et al. 2011)

About the journal

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