How to format your references using the The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 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

Arnold, F. H. “Combinatorial and Computational Challenges for Biocatalyst Design.” Nature 409, no. 6817 (January 11, 2001): 253–57.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nusbaum, Michael P., and Mark P. Beenhakker. “A Small-Systems Approach to Motor Pattern Generation.” Nature 417, no. 6886 (May 16, 2002): 343–50.

A journal article with 3 authors

Elsässer, Simon J., C. David Allis, and Peter W. Lewis. “Cancer. New Epigenetic Drivers of Cancers.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 331, no. 6021 (March 4, 2011): 1145–46.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Liu, Haijun, Luke Currano, Danny Gee, Tristan Helms, and Miao Yu. “Understanding and Mimicking the Dual Optimality of the Fly Ear.” Scientific Reports 3 (2013): 2489.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chappell, David. The JCT Standard Building Contract 2011. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

An edited book

Ambos, Kai, Judith Large, and Marieke Wierda, eds. Building a Future on Peace and Justice: Studies on Transitional Justice, Peace and Development The Nuremberg Declaration on Peace and Justice. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Levin, Roy J. “Physiology of Orgasm.” In Cancer and Sexual Health, edited by John P. Mulhall, Luca Incrocci, Irwin Goldstein, and Ray Rosen, 35–49. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press, 2011.

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 Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

Blog post

Hale, Tom. “Open Internet Campaigners Celebrate New EU Net Neutrality Guidelines.” IFLScience. IFLScience, September 1, 2016.

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. “Homeland Security: Progress Made to Implement IT Reform, but Additional Chief Information Officer Involvement Needed.” Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 18, 2017.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Cabrales, Miguel. “Gupta Rajpoot Scheme for Quark Flavor Mixing.” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2010.

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

Crow, Kelly. “A Hint of Spring: Dispute Over a Little League Field.” New York Times, February 11, 2001.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Abbreviation	J. Imp. Commonw. Hist.
ISSN (print)	0308-6534
ISSN (online)	1743-9329
Scope	History Development Political Science and International Relations