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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Hardt, W.-D. (2009). Journal club. An infection biologist points out an outstanding issue in mucosal immunology. Nature, 459(7249), 893.
A journal article with 2 authors
Jaeger, J.-J., & Marivaux, L. (2005). Paleontology. Shaking the earliest branches of anthropoid primate evolution. Science (New York, N.Y.), 310(5746), 244–245.
A journal article with 3 authors
Silbergeld, E., Lerman, S., & Hushka, L. (2004). Ethics. Human health research ethics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5686), 949.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Schwarzenbach, R. P., Escher, B. I., Fenner, K., Hofstetter, T. B., Johnson, C. A., von Gunten, U., & Wehrli, B. (2006). The challenge of micropollutants in aquatic systems. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5790), 1072–1077.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Vitale, J., & Len, I. H. (2008). Zero Limits. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Fu, M. C., Jarrow, R. A., Yen, J.-Y. J., & Elliott, R. J. (Eds.). (2007). Advances in Mathematical Finance. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser.
A chapter in an edited book
Wang, Q. (2013). Thirty Years Before/After. In T. Strong-Wilson, C. Mitchell, A. Susann, & K. Pithouse-Morgan (Eds.), Productive Remembering and Social Agency (pp. 49–60). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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
Andrew, D. (2017, January 27). Data Should Smash the Biological Myth of Promiscuous Males and Sexually Coy Females. IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (1977). Automated Systems: The Auditor’s Role (No. 102820). 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
Smith, K. A. (2010). Impact of animal assisted therapy reading instruction on reading performance of homeschooled students (Doctoral dissertation). Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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
Greenhouse, L. (2015, June 25). The Roberts Court’s Reality Check. New York Times, p. A27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hardt 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Hardt 2009; Jaeger and Marivaux 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Jaeger and Marivaux 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Schwarzenbach et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal titleTheory and Society
AbbreviationTheory Soc.
ISSN (print)0304-2421
ISSN (online)1573-7853
ScopeHistory
Sociology and Political Science

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