1. Introduction
Proper referencing of sources is essential. Whenever you get an idea or data point from a source, you need to provide a citation. Citations help your reader understand how your argument or ideas are positioned in relation to the wider scholarly literature. Citations are linked to credibility and if you do not provide them, readers might not fully understand your argument (where it is coming from). In some cases, you might be accused of plagiarism (which is a violation of Mason’s Code of Academic Integrity and can result in sanctions ranging from failing the assignment to being expelled).
Technically, you cite a reference so the in-text “pointer” to the source is the citation, and the “reference” is the full bibliographic information for the source provided in the “References Cited” section (see below). In the social sciences and humanities, citations generally come in one of two types of formats: notes or parenthetical citations.
Notes are either footnotes or endnotes. Notes typically contain the full bibliographic details of the source (for a book, for example, this typically means author, title, publisher, and year of publication, at a minimum). Sometimes a “short version” of the reference is used (e.g., just author and title), and in a few cases parenthetical citations are used in notes. Note-based formats may also have a “Bibliography” (also referred to as a “References Cited” or just “References”) list at the end of the paper (after footnotes or endnotes).
Parenthetical citations are in parenthesis in the main text and typically include author’s last name, year of publication, and, if applicable, page number—e.g. (Smith 2008, 85). Parenthetical citations always have a References or Works Cited list (not a Bibliography). In parenthetical citations, signals such as ibid. and op. cit. are seldom used.
Different formats have different rules for how to (and whether) to combine non-citation footnotes and citations. In the format that is most commonly used in GLOA—Chicago (Author-Date), see below—you can use footnotes for additional information and if you need to provide a citation in the footnote, you use Chicago (Author-Date) for that.
In the United States, the major citation formats most relevant to GLOA are:
- MLA (Modern Language Association). It is a note-based format used in the humanities. It is quite possible that this is the format you were told to use if you went to high school in the US.
- Chicago (Chicago Manual of Style). This is widely used in the humanities and social sciences. It comes in both a note version and a parenthetical version (see above). The latter is often referred to as Chicago (Author-Date). Chicago is also known as Turabian. You have access to the full Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) through Mason at https://www-chicagomanualofstyle-org/. Please note that you need to log-in to use it (see here: https://library.gmu.edu/use/off-campus).
- APA (American Psychological Association). Also widely used in the social sciences, especially psychology-adjacent ones.
- Bluebook. Used exclusively in legal materiel, including legal scholarship. It is also the “fall back” for when Chicago does not work (see below). Unfortunately, Mason does not provide access to the Bluebook Online for non-law students.
There are also specific citation formats for engineering and the natural sciences, but you are less likely to come across these in GLOA. There are literally thousands of citation formats, but most are some variation of the above (and in most cases the variations are minor). In non-US contexts, there are other citation formats that are commonly used, and you may come across these in your research, but you do not need to worry about reproducing them.
For purposes of your work in this class, you should use Chicago (Author-Date). The discussion from this point forward assumes you are using this format.
2. Citation/reference software
I strongly recommend that you use Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/) for your references. Zotero will allow you keep track of your reading, let you to tag specific sources (akin to hashtags on Twitter or Instagram), and help to ensure that your references are formatted correctly. Zotero is cross-platform (except for Chromebooks) and developed at Mason (meaning that you get unlimited free storage if you sign-up with your Mason email). It is fairly easy to figure out how to operate it and you can also attend Zotero workshops at the library.
If for whatever reason you do not want to use Zotero, paid alternatives include: Paperpile (Chrome-based so workable on Chromebooks as well as Mac, Linux, and Windows), Bookends (Mac only), Mendeley (Mac/PC/Linux), Citavi (PC only), EndNote (Mac/Windows), and Readcube (Mac/Windows). Some of these programs have iOS or Android apps. Please note that most of them require a subscription fee (e.g., Paperpile) or a substantial purchase (e.g., EndNote). Each of them has different pros and cons depending on your budget, your operating system(s), and the features that are important to you. Most of them have a Chrome, Firefox, or Safari extension or built-in browser to allow you to quickly capture references from Google Scholar, library databases, web pages, etc. Most of them will try to automatically try to extract relevant metadata (e.g., author, article title, and so on) from an imported PDF of a scholarly article. Links to reference software:
- https://www.zotero.org/ (recommended)
- https://paperpile.com/
- https://www.sonnysoftware.com/ (Bookends)
- https://www.mendeley.com/
- https://www.citavi.com/en
- https://endnote.com/
- https://www.readcube.com/home
It is also important to understand that Zotero (and others) essentially have two parts. One, what you see in the program, is essentially a database that allows you to store your references as a specific type (e.g., book, journal article). The metadata fields vary by type – for example “Journal Title” is not used for a book. The second part is the instructions to Zotero that are citation-style specific and tells Zotero how to put together the metadata in its database. These instructions are referred to as a “style” in Zotero. So when you tell Zotero to use “Chicago (author date)” in your paper (you do this in the Zotero tab in Microsoft Word, if you use Word) you are in effect telling Zotero something along the lines of “if I cite a source that is of the type ‘journal article,’ take the data in the field ‘journal title’ and italicize it” (this is repeated dozens of times for each citation, behind the scenes, for all fields).
Important: Like all software, Zotero follows the GIGO (“garbage in, garbage out”) principle and you must always double-check that the metadata is correct and manually make edits to it as needed. That Zotero (or whatever you use) did not extract the right page number, or capitalized the author incorrectly, or missed the address of the publisher, etc. is not an excuse to have these mistakes in your paper. Sometimes such automatic extraction also results in the wrong article!
3. Citing using Chicago (Author-Date)
Recall that proper citation consists of two parts, the in-text citation and the reference. To do this correctly, follow the guidelines below. You can also consult the Chicago Manual of Style online for very extensive discussion of all the applicable rules (including non-citation related writing rules).
3.1 In-text citations
In-text citations consist of the author, year of publication, and page number if you refer to a specific page or range of pages. If you refer to a work as a whole, then you can omit the page number. For example:
(Rogers 2008, 25) ← reference to a specific page (p. 25)
(Diouf 2015) ← reference to a work as a whole
(Smith 2003, 56, 68) ← reference to page 56 and 68
(Berg 2012, 56–59) ← reference to pages 56 through 59.
If you mention the author in the text, omit the author in the citation, e.g.:
In contrast to Rogers (2008), Diouf (2015) argues that….
If the source is authored by an organization and does not have a named author, use the organization.
(United Nations 2016, 184)
(Amnesty International 2001)
(BBC 2015)
Note: to make citations less unwieldy, it is acceptable to use a commonly understood/used acronym or abbreviation for author name, as is done above for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Make sure you use the same abbreviation in the References Cited list (see below).
If your source has two or three authors, list all last names:
(Rogers and Diouf 2009)
(Rogers, Diouf, and Smith 2009)
If the source has four or more authors, use et al.:
(Diouf et al. 2009)
If the source does not have a publication year, use n.d. Instead:
(United Nations n.d., 185)
(Government of Nigeria n.d.)
If it is a web page, use the “last updated” or “last modified” year instead of year of publication (this is usually available on the web page). If the webpage does not offer a date, you need to include the access date/year.
If the source does not have page numbers but have paragraph numbers, use the paragraph instead or omit it altogether if it is a webpage:
(Smith 2003) ← webpage
(Smith 2003, para. 4) ← source with paragraph numbers
The placement of the citation varies but, generally, it should be adjacent to the data/quote and before any closing punctuation (note: this is different in British English). For example:
“This is a quote from a text” (Jin 2007, 28).
According to Berg (2009, 12), “this is a quote.”
According to Berg, “this is a quote” (2009, 12).
One out of five dentists agree (Berg 2009, 12).
3.2 References Cited list
At the end of your paper, and after any endnotes (if used), you must include a list of “References Cited” (titled thusly). This list should include all sources you cite in the paper (and only these source), arranged alphabetically by author. The appearance of an item depends on what type of reference it is. Below are illustrations for the most common types (see also section 3.3). Pay attention to italicization as that is determined by the style.
If you really cannot figure out how to cite a source and the full Chicago Manual of Style is of no help, remember that the basic principle of a citation is that you should provide sufficient information to allow a reader to track down the source.
Journal Articles
Bohlen, Avis. 2003. “The Rise and Fall of Arms Control.” Survival 45 (3): 7-34.
Here, 45 is the volume and 3 is the issue. If the journal does not include issues, just include the volume. If the journal only has issue numbers, use Journal Name, no. X: where X is the issue number. Thus, the following options are also correct depending on the information provided:
Bohlen, Avis. 2003. “The Rise and Fall of Arms Control.” Survival 45: 7-34.
Bohlen, Avis. 2003. “The Rise and Fall of Arms Control.” Survival, no 3: 7-34.
Do not include the URL if you had to log-in to access the journal, as such URLs are university specific. If it has a DOI, use that (if provided – usually only for articles published in the last decade or so). For example:
Boothroyd, Dave. 2011. “Off the Record: Levinas, Derrida and the Secret of Responsibility.” Theory, Culture & Society 28 (7-8): 41-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411423037.
Book (single-authored)
Englund, Harri. 2006. Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Note that before the publisher you need to include the city in which the publisher is based. It is typical to include state or province (for Canadian publishers) information as well. For non-US/Canada-based publishers, you should include the relevant country name or ISO 2-letter country code (see below for an example, where the ISO code for the Netherlands is used).
Book (edited volume)
Behrends, Andrea, Sung-Joon Park, and Richard Rottenburg, eds. 2014. Travelling Models in African Conflict Management: Translating Technologies of Social Ordering. Leiden, NL: Brill.
Chapter in an edited volume
Moyn, Samuel. 2014. “The Return of the Prodigal: The 1970s as a Turning Point in Human Rights History.” In The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, edited by Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, 1–13. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Note that 1–13 is the page numbers for the chapter.
Internet source/web page
Greste, Peter. 2013. “Kenyans celebrate ‘boring’ elections.” Al Jazeera. Last modified March 6, 2013. https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2013/03/63336.html.
Note that if the internet source does not have a date, use “Accessed” in place of “Last Modified.” Also note that that the year is included twice, to reduce potential ambiguity.
Comments on a webpage are usually not cited directly but referred to in the text.
Social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
O’Brien, Conan (@ConanOBrien). 2015. “In honor of Earth Day, I’m recycling my tweets.” Twitter, April 22, 2015, 11:10 a.m. https://twitter.com/ConanOBrien/status/590940792967016448.
Note in the in-text citation, use last name as for any other citation, unless the screen name/handle is the only one known (in which case you have to use that).
Reports non-governmental organizations, government agencies, etc.
These can often be cited as a book, if published, e.g.:
Amnesty International. 2014. Torture in 2014: 30 Years of Broken Promises. London, UK: Amnesty International.
However, oftentimes reports use an organization-specific locator and you will want to include this after the title but before publisher information. It is also common to include the URL if available (do this after publisher).
Amnesty International. 2014. Torture in 2014: 30 Years of Broken Promises. ACT 40/004/2014. London, UK: Amnesty International.
Note that it is allowable for the author and publisher to be the same—if you use an acronym for the author, use the full name for the publisher.
Additional considerations:
- If a source has four or more authors, use first author followed by et al.
- If there is no known author, not even an authoring organization, the title is used instead in both the in-text citations and reference list. In the latter, the initial article (e.g., The) is ignored for purposes of alphabetical arrangement.
- If you want to cite online media, like a YouTube video, cite it like any other internet source. If you need to cite audiovisual media that is not online, consult Chicago Manual of Style 15.57.
- If you want to cite a newspaper article or magazine article that is online, cite it like any other internet source. If you are citing it in hard copy, consult Chicago Manual of Style 15.49.
- If you need to cite an unpublished interview, letter, email, (published interviews can be cited as journal articles, Internet sources, or book chapters, as applicable), whether it is one you conducted/received or not, do not include it in the References Cited list. Cite it in text and provide name, medium (e.g., interview, email), and date (insofar as confidentiality allows), e.g.
(Lamin Camara, WhatsApp message to author, May 4, 2019)
If the interview/message is confidential or “off-the-record” you may have to use a pseudonym or a more general date. In such cases, please consult with me.
3.3 Legal materials, international treaties, UN documents, etc.
The above rules are applicable to all published materials like journal articles, books, etc. but what if—as is common in GLOA papers— you want to cite a legal case, international treaty, or UN document? Chicago (Author-Date) is not well-equipped to handle some of this material, and Zotero does not have some of the reference types (e.g., treaties) that you might need. The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, has compiled a helpful guide for how to use Zotero for international legal material. Please see here: https://libguides.graduateinstitute.ch/zotero/law (section: “Zotero for International Law Students” and sub-sections)—but it primarily focuses on how to insert things into Zotero, not to ensure that the output looks correct.
The Chicago Manual of Style advises authors to use the Bluebook (see above) for legal sources. This means that even though you are using Chicago (Author-Date) you should put such legal sources in footnotes and not include them in the References Cited list (sometimes you see journal articles with a separate list of “Statutes cited” or similar). See Chicago Manual of Style 15.58).
Below are examples for some of the most commonly occurring (in a GLOA context) legal materiel. These are taken from Bluebook Online (https://www.legalbluebook.com). If you have extensive need for it, you can sign-up for a free trial. Also note that if you are using Chicago you are writing for a non-legal audience by definition, so when the examples below use acronyms and abbreviations, you may want to spell them out and, if the item is accessed online, provide the URL (but keep in mind that this is a deviation from the Bluebook and a lawyer would not be happy).
Multinational treaty/convention
Organization of American States, American Convention on Human Rights, Nov. 22, 1969, O.A.S.T.S. No. 36, 1144 U.N.T.S. 123.
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Dec. 10, 1982, 1833 U.N.T.S. 397.
If the treaty is authored by an organization that is not evident from the name of the treaty, use it as if it is an author (in the first example), otherwise start with title (in the second example). This is followed by the date of signing (not the date of effect). The following notations—O.A.S.T.S. No 36 and 1114 U.N.T.S. 123 (or 1833 U.N.T.S. 397 in the second example)—are to official treaty sources. A treaty source is an official collection of treaties (these used to be thick books, now they are often online). The most common treaty source for GLOA purposes is the United Nations Treaty Collection, or UNTC (formerly the United Nations Treaty Series, which is referenced in these examples). The UNTC is here: https://treaties.un.org/. The UNTC includes all UN related treaties and also a lot of non-UN and bilateral ones. If you look at the second example, 1833 refers to the volume of UNTC/UNTS and 397 refers to the first page of the treaty in this volume (this is a legacy of when treaties were printed in thick books, but the citation practice remains—the volume is on the “landing page” for each treaty in the UNTC, the first page can be identified by opening the attached PDF).
Bilateral treaty
Convention for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with Respect to Taxes on Estates, Inheritances, and Gifts, Fr.-U.S., Nov. 24 1978, 32 U.S.T 1935.
This is an example of a treaty between the US and France. Note that after the name of the treaty it includes the parties of the treaty and that it references the United States Treaty Series (U.S.T.) rather than the UN one.
UN Resolutions
G.A. Res. 47/163, § 5 (Dec. 18, 1992)
S.C. Res. 508, § 3 (June 5, 1982).
G.A. Res. 217 (III) A, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec. 10, 1948).
Resolutions and decisions by UN bodies are shown above. They are cited with the resolution number (47/163 in the first example, the paragraph cited, and the date. If a resolution is widely known by a name, as in the third example, the name is included. Security Council resolutions are cited the same way (2nd example). For subsidiary UN bodes, a bit more information is usually provided, e.g.,
Human Rights Council Res. 5/1, U.N. Doc. A/62/53, at 48 (June 18, 2007).
Note that here the UN Document number is used after the resolution number. The “at” is equivalent to the § and either can be used.
Other UN documents include reports, and they can be cited either as resolutions (if adopted in a resolution) or as reports, above (in the latter case they are included in the References Cited list but not in the former).
Resolutions from other multinational bodies such as the African Union should follow the UN format as closely as possible.
US Legal Cases
Commonwealth v. Virelli, 620 A.2d 543 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1992).
US legal citation is very complex, but, as a rule, the format should be the above. It includes the title of the case (Commonwealth v. Virelli), the volume of the reporter (620), the reporter (A.2d), the first page of the case in the reporter (543), the court (Pa. Super. Ct.) and date decided (1992). Note that a reporter is like a treaty series (see above) and is a printed collection of decided cases. There are hundreds of different reporters in the US and different states and court use different ones. See, generally, Bluebook T1.
Non-US legal cases
These vary enormously too. The relevant section of the Bluebook is T2, and this part is available free to everyone: https://www.legalbluebook.com/bluebook/v21/tables/t2-foreign-jurisdictions. It includes information for most major countries in Europe, many Latin American countries, and several countries in East Asia, Africa, and Middle East. If the country you need is not on this list, try to use a country with a similar legal system.
International Legal Cases
Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), Judgment, 1986 I.C.J. Rep. 14, ¶ 190 (June 27).
These vary from court to court but should generally adhere to the format above: Title, including parties in parenthesis, type of decision (some courts might issue an advisory opinion, for example, which is different than a judgment), year decided, court (here I.C.J., short for the International Court of Justice), publication where found (“Rep. 14” in this case), paragraph cited (if applicable), and date.
