How to format your references using the Social Science Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social Science Research. 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

Carter, E.A., 2008. Challenges in modeling materials properties without experimental input. Science 321, 800–803.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cerdán, P.D., Chory, J., 2003. Regulation of flowering time by light quality. Nature 423, 881–885.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dame, R.T., Noom, M.C., Wuite, G.J.L., 2006. Bacterial chromatin organization by H-NS protein unravelled using dual DNA manipulation. Nature 444, 387–390.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lee, K., Cho, S., Park, S.H., Heeger, A.J., Lee, C.-W., Lee, S.-H., 2006. Metallic transport in polyaniline. Nature 441, 65–68.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McMaster, M.C., 2007. HPLC. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Thangavel, P., Sridevi, G. (Eds.), 2015. Environmental Sustainability: Role of Green Technologies. Springer India, New Delhi.

A chapter in an edited book

Hundhausen, C.D., 2014. Evaluating Visualization Environments: Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Perspectives, in: Huang, W. (Ed.), Handbook of Human Centric Visualization. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 115–145.

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 Social Science Research.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014. Scientists Find Biological “Switch” That Reverts Mature Liver Cells to Stem Cells [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-find-biological-“switch”-reverts-mature-liver-cells-stem-cells/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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. DHS Research and Development: Science and Technology Directorate’s Test and Evaluation and Reorganization Efforts (No. GAO-12-239T). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Powell, T.J., 2012. Saxophone sonatas: 1980–2010 (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

Peters, M.E., Barend, S., 2017. Why Private Cash Improves Public Works. New York Times A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Carter, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Carter, 2008; Cerdán and Chory, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Cerdán and Chory, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Lee et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Social Science Research
Abbreviation	Soc. Sci. Res.
ISSN (print)	0049-089X
Scope	Education Sociology and Political Science