How to format your references using the Studies in Communication Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Studies in Communication Sciences. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Haidt, J. (2007). The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5827), 998–1002.
A journal article with 2 authors
Venkatesan, A. K., & Halden, R. U. (2014). Wastewater treatment plants as chemical observatories to forecast ecological and human health risks of manmade chemicals. Scientific Reports, 4, 3731.
A journal article with 3 authors
Sasaki, T., Yamamoto, Y., & Koashi, M. (2014). Practical quantum key distribution protocol without monitoring signal disturbance. Nature, 509(7501), 475–478.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zhang, J., Hupfeld, C. J., Taylor, S. S., Olefsky, J. M., & Tsien, R. Y. (2005). Insulin disrupts beta-adrenergic signalling to protein kinase A in adipocytes. Nature, 437(7058), 569–573.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Voit, B., Haag, R., Appelhans, D., & Welzel, P. B. (2016). Bio- and Multifunctional Polymer Architectures. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Gairing, M., & Savani, R. (Eds.). (2016). Algorithmic Game Theory: 9th International Symposium, SAGT 2016, Liverpool, UK, September 19–21, 2016, Proceedings (Vol. 9928). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Plonsey, R., & Barr, R. C. (2007). Channels. In R. C. Barr (Ed.), Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach (pp. 71–95). Springer US.

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 Studies in Communication Sciences.

Blog post
Hale, T. (2017, March 29). This Cloud Actually Rains Drops Of Tequila. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/this-cloud-actually-rains-drops-of-tequila/

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. (1979). Social Security Student Benefits for Postsecondary Students Should Be Discontinued (HRD-79-108). 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
Fletcher, B. (2017). Tropes of Dis/Ableism as Flexible Stigma: Examining Brenda Connors’ 2008 Report as an Instance of Dis/Ableist Polemical Rhetoric [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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
Dyson, M. E. (2017, August 13). Charlottesville and the Bigotocracy. New York Times, A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Haidt, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Haidt, 2007; Venkatesan & Halden, 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Venkatesan & Halden, 2014)
  • Three authors: (Sasaki et al., 2014)
  • 6 or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titleStudies in Communication Sciences
AbbreviationStud. Commun. Sci.
ISSN (print)1424-4896
ScopeCommunication

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