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

Schiermeier, Q. (2000). Call for more accelerator research. Nature, 405(6790), 988.

A journal article with 2 authors

Leonhardt, U., & Tyc, T. (2009). Broadband invisibility by non-Euclidean cloaking. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5910), 110–112.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cronin, T. W., Caldwell, R. L., & Marshall, J. (2001). Sensory adaptation. Tunable colour vision in a mantis shrimp. Nature, 411(6837), 547–548.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Dirks, P. H. G. M., Kibii, J. M., Kuhn, B. F., Steininger, C., Churchill, S. E., Kramers, J. D., et al. (2010). Geological setting and age of Australopithecus sediba from southern Africa. Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5975), 205–208.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Li, R. C.-H. (2008). RF Circuit Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bandyopadhyay, S. (2013). Unsupervised Classification: Similarity Measures, Classical and Metaheuristic Approaches, and Applications. (S. Saha, Ed.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gołab, S. (2011). Sur L’ÉQuation Fonctionnelle Des Brigades. In B. Forte (Ed.), Functional Equations and Inequalities (pp. 141–151). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 The American Sociologist.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, August 3). Pluto Scientists Were Masters Of The Long Haul – Here’s How People Stick With Extremely Long-Term Goals. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/pluto-scientists-were-masters-long-haul-here-s-how-people-stick-extremely-long-term-goals/. 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. (1989). Effective Schools Programs: Their Extent and Characteristics (No. HRD-89-132BR). 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

Berkow, K. (2017). Importance of Effective Leadership for the Success of Mergers and Acquisitions (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Billard, M. (2010, August 5). Still Wild For Animal Prints. New York Times, p. E6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schiermeier 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Leonhardt and Tyc 2009; Schiermeier 2000).

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

Two authors: (Leonhardt and Tyc 2009)
Three or more authors: (Dirks et al. 2010)

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