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

Leadlay, Peter F. 2014. “Structural Biology: Enzyme Assembly Line Pictured.” Nature 510(7506):482–83.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nussenzweig, Michel C., and Ira Mellman. 2011. “Ralph Steinman (1943-2011).” Nature 478(7370):460.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yuan, Xunlai, Shuhai Xiao, and T. N. Taylor. 2005. “Lichen-like Symbiosis 600 Million Years Ago.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 308(5724):1017–20.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Bayer, Martin, Tal Nawy, Carmela Giglione, Mary Galli, Thierry Meinnel, and Wolfgang Lukowitz. 2009. “Paternal Control of Embryonic Patterning in Arabidopsis Thaliana.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 323(5920):1485–88.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kondrashov, Alexey S. 2017. Crumbling Genome. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Wichert, Reiner, and Birgid Eberhardt, eds. 2012. Ambient Assisted Living: 5. AAL-Kongress 2012 Berlin, Germany, January 24-25, 2012. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Rodrigues, Eliane Regina, and Jorge Alberto Achcar. 2013. “Modeling the Time Between Ozone Exceedances.” Pp. 65–78 in Applications of Discrete-time Markov Chains and Poisson Processes to Air Pollution Modeling and Studies, SpringerBriefs in Mathematics, edited by J. A. Achcar. New York, NY: 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

Davis, Josh. 2017. “New Zealand River Is Given Same Legal Rights As Humans.” IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018 (https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-zealand-river-is-given-same-legal-rights-as-humans/).

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. 2000. Aviation Security: Long-Standing Problems Impair Airport Screeners’ Performance. RCED-00-75. 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

Dooling, Shannon Marie. 2013. “Like A Unicorn in Captivity.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Soloski, Alexis. 2015. “The Ethics of Telling Someone Else’s Story.” New York Times, May 6, C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Leadlay 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Leadlay 2014; Nussenzweig and Mellman 2011).

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

Two authors: (Nussenzweig and Mellman 2011)
Three authors: (Yuan, Xiao, and Taylor 2005)
4 or more authors: (Bayer et al. 2009)

About the journal

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

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