How to format your references using the Sociology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Sociology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Padian K (2001) Owen’s Parthian shot. Nature 412(6843): 123–124.

A journal article with 2 authors

Allen TM and Cullis PR (2004) Drug delivery systems: entering the mainstream. Science (New York, N.Y.) 303(5665): 1818–1822.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brown ME, Bouchez AH and Griffith CA (2002) Direct detection of variable tropospheric clouds near Titan’s south pole. Nature 420(6917): 795–797.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Guo P, Hirano M, Herrin BR, et al. (2009) Dual nature of the adaptive immune system in lampreys. Nature 459(7248): 796–801.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McCall MW (2010) Classical Mechanics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Gibson J (2016) Optical Flow and Trajectory Estimation Methods (ed. O Marques). SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Bouhafs F, Mackay M and Merabti M (2014) Home Energy Management Systems. In: Mackay M and Merabti M (eds) Communication Challenges and Solutions in the Smart Grid. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. New York, NY: Springer, pp. 53–67.

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 Sociology.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) There’s Very Little Evidence That Flossing Actually Works. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/theres-very-little-evidence-that-flossing-actually-works/ (accessed 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 (2016) Federal Research Opportunities: DOE, DOD, and HHS Need Better Guidance for Participant Activities. GAO-16-128, 20 January. 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

Cornejo VM (2010) Teachers’ perceptions about promoting mental health in the classroom. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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 L (2017) Trump v. the Court. New York Times, 4 February.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Padian, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Allen and Cullis, 2004; Padian, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Allen and Cullis, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Guo et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Sociology
Abbreviation	Sociology
ISSN (print)	0038-0385
ISSN (online)	1469-8684
Scope	Sociology and Political Science