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

Rishbeth, H. (2002). High above the Earth. Nature, 418(6893), 23.

A journal article with 2 authors

De Francesco, R., & Migliaccio, G. (2005). Challenges and successes in developing new therapies for hepatitis C. Nature, 436(7053), 953–960.

A journal article with 3 authors

Branzei, D., Vanoli, F., & Foiani, M. (2008). SUMOylation regulates Rad18-mediated template switch. Nature, 456(7224), 915–920.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Aso, R., Kan, D., Shimakawa, Y., & Kurata, H. (2013). Atomic level observation of octahedral distortions at the perovskite oxide heterointerface. Scientific reports, 3, 2214.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mead, J. M., & Gruneberg, S. (2013). Programme Procurement in Construction. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Mullen, K. D., & Prakash, R. K. (Eds.). (2012). Hepatic Encephalopathy. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Michels, J., Appel, E., & Gorb, S. N. (2016). Resilin – The Pliant Protein. In E. Cohen & B. Moussian (Eds.), Extracellular Composite Matrices in Arthropods (pp. 89–136). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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, February 10). White Dwarf Merger Is Set To Prove Supernova Theory. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/white-dwarf-merger-set-prove-supernova-theory/. 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. (2007). Information Technology: VA and DOD Are Making Progress in Sharing Medical Information, but Remain Far from Having Comprehensive Electronic Medical Records (No. GAO-07-1108T). 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

Kuang, S.-Y. H. (2010). “And the War Came”: A memorial to devastated lives (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

Wagner, J. (2017, February 26). Mets Evaluate Their Options at First Base After Duda Is Sidelined by Hip Stiffness. New York Times, p. SP3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rishbeth 2002).
This sentence cites two references (De Francesco and Migliaccio 2005; Rishbeth 2002).

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

Two authors: (De Francesco and Migliaccio 2005)
Three or more authors: (Aso et al. 2013)

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

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