How to format your references using the The American Sociologist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Sociologist. 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

Huntington, H. P. (2011). Arctic science: The local perspective. Nature, 478(7368), 182–183.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cantrell, R. P., & Reeves, T. G. (2002). The rice genome. The cereal of the world’s poor takes center stage. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5565), 53.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sword, G. A., Lorch, P. D., & Gwynne, D. T. (2005). Insect behaviour: migratory bands give crickets protection. Nature, 433(7027), 703.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Carlson, C. M., Endrizzi, B. T., Wu, J., Ding, X., Weinreich, M. A., Walsh, E. R., et al. (2006). Kruppel-like factor 2 regulates thymocyte and T-cell migration. Nature, 442(7100), 299–302.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alhabeeb, M. J. (2012). Mathematical Finance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Farkas, J. (2013). Optimum Design of Steel Structures. (K. Jármai, Ed.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Seki, S., Sakurai, T., Omichi, M., Saeki, A., & Sakamaki, D. (2015). Stimuli-Responsive Nanomaterials. In T. Sakurai, M. Omichi, A. Saeki, & D. Sakamaki (Eds.), High-Energy Charged Particles: Their Chemistry and Use as Versatile Tools for Nanofabrication (pp. 41–52). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

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 The American Sociologist.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, October 18). Deadly Viruses Are Wiping Out Spanish Amphibians. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/deadly-viruses-are-wiping-out-spanish-amphibians/. 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). Information Technology: Management of Interdependencies between Programs Supporting 2020 Census (No. GAO-16-723T). 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

Culumber, J. J. (2017). Physician Practice Survival: The Role of Analytics in Shaping the Future (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Hodgman, J. (2017, June 23). Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times, p. MM22.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Huntington 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Cantrell and Reeves 2002; Huntington 2011).

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

Two authors: (Cantrell and Reeves 2002)
Three or more authors: (Carlson et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Sociologist
Abbreviation	Am. Sociol.
ISSN (print)	0003-1232
ISSN (online)	1936-4784
Scope	Social Sciences (miscellaneous) Sociology and Political Science