How to format your references using the Theory and Society citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Theory and Society. 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

Owens, B. (2014). Stroke. Nature, 510(7506), S1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yu, H., & Li, B. (2013). Wavelength-converted wave-guiding in dye-doped polymer nanofibers. Scientific reports, 3, 1674.

A journal article with 3 authors

Durniak, K. J., Bailey, S., & Steitz, T. A. (2008). The structure of a transcribing T7 RNA polymerase in transition from initiation to elongation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5901), 553–557.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Asters, M. C., Williams, W. P., Perkins, A. D., Mylroie, J. E., Windham, G. L., & Shan, X. (2014). Relating significance and relations of differentially expressed genes in response to Aspergillus flavus infection in maize. Scientific reports, 4, 4815.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hillis, D. R., & Duvall, J. B. (2012). Improving Profitability through Green Manufacturing. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Sanchis-Alfonso, V., & Monllau, J. C. (Eds.). (2013). The ACL-Deficient Knee: A Problem Solving Approach. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Bernardi, A., Decker, B., Holz, H., Muthig, D., & Nomura, N. (2005). 1st Intelligent Office Appliances (IOA 2005): Knowledge Appliances in the Office of the Future. In K.-D. Althoff, A. Dengel, R. Bergmann, M. Nick, & T. Roth-Berghofer (Eds.), Professional Knowledge Management: Third Biennial Conference, WM 2005, Kaiserslautern, Germany, April 10-13, 2005, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 48–49). 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 Theory and Society.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, March 19). Thirsty sea snakes go half a year without drinking. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/thirsty-sea-snakes-go-half-year-without-drinking/. 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. (2011). Transportation Worker Identification Credential: Internal Control Weaknesses Need to Be Corrected to Help Achieve Security Objectives (No. GAO-11-648T). 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

Fails, J. A. (2009). Mobile collaboration for young children: Reading and creating stories (Doctoral dissertation). University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Johnson, G. (2014, July 22). Blind as a Bat: A Case of Mind vs. Body. New York Times, p. D6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Owens 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Owens 2014; Yu and Li 2013).

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

Two authors: (Yu and Li 2013)
Three or more authors: (Asters et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Theory and Society
Abbreviation	Theory Soc.
ISSN (print)	0304-2421
ISSN (online)	1573-7853
Scope	History Sociology and Political Science