How to format your references using the Visual Studies citation style

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

Anthes, Emily. 2014. “Treatment: Marginal Gains.” Nature 508 (7496): S54-6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lloyd, Keith, and Jo White. 2011. “Democratizing Clinical Research.” Nature 474 (7351): 277–278.

A journal article with 3 authors

Vreeland, R. H., W. D. Rosenzweig, and D. W. Powers. 2000. “Isolation of a 250 Million-Year-Old Halotolerant Bacterium from a Primary Salt Crystal.” Nature 407 (6806): 897–900.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Moy, Christopher M., Geoffrey O. Seltzer, Donald T. Rodbell, and David M. Anderson. 2002. “Variability of El Niño/Southern Oscillation Activity at Millennial Timescales during the Holocene Epoch.” Nature 420 (6912): 162–165.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mariño, Pablo Pavón. 2016. Optimization of Computer Networks - Modeling and Algorithms. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Xu, Weixia, Liquan Xiao, Jinwen Li, Chengyi Zhang, and Zhenzhen Zhu, eds. 2016. Computer Engineering and Technology: 20th CCF Conference, NCCET 2016, Xi’an, China, August 10-12, 2016, Revised Selected Papers. Vol. 666. Communications in Computer and Information Science. Singapore: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Dawson, Andrew, Niki Kringos, Tom Scarpas, and Primož Pavšič. 2009. “Water in the Pavement Surfacing.” In Water in Road Structures: Movement, Drainage and Effects, edited by Andrew Dawson, 81–105. Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 Visual Studies.

Blog post

Davis, Josh. 2016. “Nepal Nearly Doubled Their Tiger Population In Just Three Years.” IFLScience. 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. 1979. Information on Federally Assisted Health Professions Scholarship Programs. HRD-79-57. 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

Pesochinsky, Nina. 2019. “Effect of Refractive Vision Correction of Myopia and Hyperopia Through Laser Surgery (LASIK & PRK) on Symptoms of Depression, Stress Perception and Self-Esteem in Adults (22-55).” Doctoral dissertation, Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Pilon, Mary. 2014. “New York Mulls New Bid.” New York Times, May 15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Anthes 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Anthes 2014; Lloyd and White 2011).

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

Two authors: (Lloyd and White 2011)
Three authors: (Vreeland, Rosenzweig, and Powers 2000)
4 or more authors: (Moy et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Visual Studies
Abbreviation	Vis. Stud.
ISSN (print)	1472-586X
ISSN (online)	1472-5878
Scope	Visual Arts and Performing Arts Anthropology Cultural Studies