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

Lamborg, Carl. 2007. “Geochemistry. A New Twist for Mercury.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 318 (5849): 402–403.

A journal article with 2 authors

Martin, Charles R., and Lane A. Baker. 2005. “Materials Science. Expanding the Molecular Electronics Toolbox.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 309 (5731): 67–68.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nederbragt, Alexander J., André E. van Loon, and Wim J. A. G. Dictus. 2002. “Evolutionary Biology: Hedgehog Crosses the Snail’s Midline.” Nature 417 (6891): 811–812.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Duan, Yabing, Xiaoke Zhang, Changyan Ge, Yong Wang, Junhong Cao, Xiaojing Jia, Jianxin Wang, and Mingguo Zhou. 2014. “Development and Application of Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification for Detection of the F167Y Mutation of Carbendazim-Resistant Isolates in Fusarium Graminearum.” Scientific Reports 4 (November): 7094.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Duggan, Dominic. 2012. Enterprise Software Architecture and Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Chen, Lei, Chengfei Liu, Qing Liu, and Ke Deng, eds. 2009. Database Systems for Advanced Applications: DASFAA 2009 International Workshops: BenchmarX, MCIS, WDPP, PPDA, MBC, PhD, Brisbane, Australia, April 20 - 23, 2009. Vol. 5667. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Sen, Sambit, and Roger Williams. 2009. “Liver Substitution.” In Artificial Organs, edited by Nadey S. Hakim, 57–76. London: 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 Visual Studies.

Blog post

Carpineti, Alfredo. 2016. “Scientists Think They Know Why Beagle 2 Didn’t Send A Signal Back From Mars.” 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. 1994. Longer Combination Vehicles: Potential Infrastructure Impacts, Productivity Benefits, and Safety Concerns. T-RCED-94-306. 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

Lucky-Medford, Lindsay. 2010. “A Gendered Approach to Synaesthesia Using the Poetry of John Keats and Emily Dickinson.” Doctoral dissertation, Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic 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

Powell, Michael. 2017. “Always A ‘Shadow’ To Beat.” New York Times, June 19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lamborg 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Lamborg 2007; Martin and Baker 2005).

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

Two authors: (Martin and Baker 2005)
Three authors: (Nederbragt, van Loon, and Dictus 2002)
4 or more authors: (Duan et al. 2014)

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

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