How to format your references using the Journal of African Cultural Studies citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of African Cultural 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	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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Moore, Pete. 2005. “Amplifying the Signal.” Nature 435 (7039): 236.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brochier, Céline, and Hervé Philippe. 2002. “Phylogeny: A Non-Hyperthermophilic Ancestor for Bacteria.” Nature 417 (6886): 244.

A journal article with 3 authors

Richards, Michael P., Rick J. Schulting, and Robert E. M. Hedges. 2003. “Archaeology: Sharp Shift in Diet at Onset of Neolithic.” Nature 425 (6956): 366.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Pichot, Vincent, Benedikt Risse, Fabien Schnell, Julien Mory, and Denis Spitzer. 2013. “Understanding Ultrafine Nanodiamond Formation Using Nanostructured Explosives.” Scientific Reports 3 (2013): 2159.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Padova, Ted, and Kelly L. Murdock. 2010. Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Bible. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Ketonen, L. M. 2005. Pediatric Brain and Spine: An Atlas of MRI and Spectroscopy. Edited by A. Hiwatashi, R. Sidhu, and P-L Westesson. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Eriksson, Lars, Johan Wahlström, and Markus Klein. 2010. “Physical Modeling of Turbocharged Engines and Parameter Identification.” In Automotive Model Predictive Control: Models, Methods and Applications, edited by Luigi del Re, Frank Allgöwer, Luigi Glielmo, Carlos Guardiola, and Ilya Kolmanovsky, 53–71. Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, Manfred Morari and Manfred Thoma. 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 Journal of African Cultural Studies.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2014. “Learning New Words Activates The Same Brain Regions As Sex And Drugs.” IFLScience, IFLScience, October 29. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/learning-new-words-activates-same-brain-regions-sex-and-drugs/.

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. 2012. Aviation Safety: FAA Is Taking Steps to Improve Data, but Challenges for Managing Safety Risks Remain. GAO-12-660T. 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

Vidal, Elisa M. 2014. “Alcohol Disorder with Hip or Knee Surgery: Postoperative Alcohol Disorder-Related Costs and Length of Stay.” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach.

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

Oestreich, James R. 2017. “Move Over, Bach. Handel’s Moving In.” New York Times, March 12, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Moore 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Moore 2005; Brochier and Philippe 2002).

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

Two authors: (Brochier and Philippe 2002)
Three authors: (Richards, Schulting, and Hedges 2003)
4 or more authors: (Pichot et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of African Cultural Studies
Abbreviation	J. Afr. Cult. Stud.
ISSN (print)	1369-6815
ISSN (online)	1469-9346
Scope	Language and Linguistics Literature and Literary Theory Music Visual Arts and Performing Arts Linguistics and Language Cultural Studies