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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Bennett CL (2006) Cosmology from start to finish. Nature 440(7088): 1126–1131.
A journal article with 2 authors
Korber B and Gnanakaran S (2011) AIDS/HIV. Converging on an HIV vaccine. Science (New York, N.Y.) 333(6049): 1589–1590.
A journal article with 3 authors
Meylan E, Tschopp J and Karin M (2006) Intracellular pattern recognition receptors in the host response. Nature 442(7098): 39–44.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Weinstock IA, Barbuzzi EM, Wemple MW, et al. (2001) Equilibrating metal-oxide cluster ensembles for oxidation reactions using oxygen in water. Nature 414(6860): 191–195.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Kubicek CP (2012) Fungi and Lignocellulosic Biomass. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
An edited book
Graziani F (ed.) (2006) Computational Methods in Transport: Granlibakken 2004. Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Suárez AG, Trujillo M and Berjano EJ (2013) Estudio de Elementos Finitos de un Electrodo Bipolar Internamente Refrigerado para Coagulación de Tejidos Biológicos mediante Corrientes de Radiofrecuencia. In: Folgueras Méndez J, Aznielle Rodríguez TY, Calderón Marín CF, et al. (eds) V Latin American Congress on Biomedical Engineering CLAIB 2011 May 16-21, 2011, Habana, Cuba: Sustainable Technologies for the Health of All. IFMBE Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 13–16.

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) 33 Rescued Circus Lions Are Returning To Africa By Airplane. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/33-rescued-circus-lions-are-returning-africa-airplane/ (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 (2005) Commercial Aviation: Preliminary Observations on Legacy Airlines’ Financial Condition, Bankruptcy, and Pension Issues. GAO-05-835T, 22 June. 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
Clément V (2017) From Adaptation to Transformation: A Resilience Perspective on Organizational Responses to Ecological Adversity. 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
Joy S (2013) Danger: Earrings Ahead! New York Times, 29 August.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bennett, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bennett, 2006; Korber and Gnanakaran, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Korber and Gnanakaran, 2011)
  • Three or more authors: (Weinstock et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleSociology
AbbreviationSociology
ISSN (print)0038-0385
ISSN (online)1469-8684
ScopeSociology and Political Science

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