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

Goodman, S. 2003 ‘Europe attempts to promote women scientists’, Nature 426(6963): p.210–211.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yin, H. and Lin, H. 2007 ‘An epigenetic activation role of Piwi and a Piwi-associated piRNA in Drosophila melanogaster’, Nature 450(7167): p.304–308.

A journal article with 3 authors

Park, S.-H., Zarrinpar, A. and Lim, W.A. 2003 ‘Rewiring MAP kinase pathways using alternative scaffold assembly mechanisms’, Science (New York, N.Y.) 299(5609): p.1061–1064.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chan, Y.F., Marks, M.E., Jones, F.C., Villarreal, G., Jr, Shapiro, M.D., Brady, S.D., Southwick, A.M., Absher, D.M., Grimwood, J., Schmutz, J., Myers, R.M., Petrov, D., Jónsson, B., Schluter, D., Bell, M.A. and Kingsley, D.M. 2010 ‘Adaptive evolution of pelvic reduction in sticklebacks by recurrent deletion of a Pitx1 enhancer’, Science (New York, N.Y.) 327(5963): p.302–305.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Courant, R. and McShane, E.J. 1988 Differential and Integral Calculus, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Chang, R.-S., Jain, L.C. and Peng, S.-L. (eds) 2013 Advances in Intelligent Systems and Applications - Volume 1: Proceedings of the International Computer Symposium ICS 2012 Held at Hualien, Taiwan, December 12–14, 2012, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Mohanty, M.S. and Rishabh, K. 2016 ‘Financial Intermediation and Monetary Policy Transmission in EMEs: What has Changed Since the 2008 Crisis?’ in C. Ghate and K. M. Kletzer (eds) Monetary Policy in India: A Modern Macroeconomic Perspective, New Delhi: Springer India.

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

Davis, J. 2016 ‘US National Security Could Be Severely Affected By Climate Change Over The Next 20 Years’, IFLScience.

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 1995 Combined Fund Update, 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

Nunez, F.V. 2010 A study of the application of the concepts of Karen Horney in leadership development within the National Management Association of the Boeing Company. Doctoral dissertation. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University.

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

Murphy, M.J.O. 2016 ‘Friday File: A Household of April Fool’s Jokes’, New York Times: p.C27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goodman 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Goodman 2003; Yin and Lin 2007).

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

Two authors: (Yin and Lin 2007)
Three authors: (Park, Zarrinpar and Lim 2003)
4 or more authors: (Chan et al. 2010)

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