How to format your references using the The British Journal of Sociology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The British Journal of 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Galizia, C.G. 2007 ‘Neuroscience. Brainwashing, honeybee style’, Science (New York, N.Y.) 317(5836): p.326–327.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schliwa, M. and Woehlke, G. 2003 ‘Molecular motors’, Nature 422(6933): p.759–765.

A journal article with 3 authors

Takahashi, T., Svoboda, K. and Malinow, R. 2003 ‘Experience strengthening transmission by driving AMPA receptors into synapses’, Science (New York, N.Y.) 299(5612): p.1585–1588.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Nagai, H., Chew, S.H., Okazaki, Y., Funahashi, S., Namba, T., Kato, T., Enomoto, A., Jiang, L., Akatsuka, S. and Toyokuni, S. 2013 ‘Metamorphosis of mesothelial cells with active horizontal motility in tissue culture’, Scientific reports 3: p.1144.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schroeder, K., Thompson, T., Frith, K. and Pencheon, D. 2012 Sustainable Healthcare, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Karthikeyan, M. 2014 Practical Chemoinformatics R. Vyas (ed), New Delhi: Springer India.

A chapter in an edited book

Boutellier, R. and Heinzen, M. 2014 ‘Diffusion of New Technologies’ in M. Heinzen (ed) Growth Through Innovation: Managing the Technology-Driven Enterprise, Management for Professionals. 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 British Journal of Sociology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. 2015 ‘Comet Impacts May Have Produced The Building Blocks For Life On Earth’, IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/comet-impacts-may-have-produced-building-blocks-life-earth/ [Accessed October 30, 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 1988 Highway Contracting: Assessing Fraud and Abuse in FHwA’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program, 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

Shurts, C. 2010 Superstructure. Doctoral dissertation. Long Beach, CA: 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

Markoff, J. 2017 ‘Technologists Face Hurdles Before They Take Wheel’, New York Times: p.B4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Galizia 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Galizia 2007; Schliwa and Woehlke 2003).

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

Two authors: (Schliwa and Woehlke 2003)
Three authors: (Takahashi, Svoboda and Malinow 2003)
4 or more authors: (Nagai et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	The British Journal of Sociology
Abbreviation	Br. J. Sociol.
ISSN (print)	0007-1315
ISSN (online)	1468-4446
Scope	Sociology and Political Science