How to format your references using the Action Learning: Research and Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Action Learning: Research and Practice. 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

Pilling, Michael J. 2014. “Chemical Kinetics. Calculating the Pressure Dependence of Chemical Reactions.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 346 (6214): 1183–1184.

A journal article with 2 authors

Chatterjee, Saibal, and Helge Grosshans. 2009. “Active Turnover Modulates Mature MicroRNA Activity in Caenorhabditis Elegans.” Nature 461 (7263): 546–549.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yanagisawa, Shuichi, Sang-Dong Yoo, and Jen Sheen. 2003. “Differential Regulation of EIN3 Stability by Glucose and Ethylene Signalling in Plants.” Nature 425 (6957): 521–525.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Fryxell, John M., Anna Mosser, Anthony R. E. Sinclair, and Craig Packer. 2007. “Group Formation Stabilizes Predator-Prey Dynamics.” Nature 449 (7165): 1041–1043.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gabler, Jay. 2010. Sociology for Dummies®. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Foster, Charles. 2015. Altruism, Welfare and the Law. Edited by Jonathan Herring. SpringerBriefs in Law. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Abdulla, Parosh Aziz, Noomene Ben Henda, Luca de Alfaro, Richard Mayr, and Sven Sandberg. 2008. “Stochastic Games with Lossy Channels.” In Foundations of Software Science and Computational Structures: 11th International Conference, FOSSACS 2008, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2008, Budapest, Hungary, March 29 - April 6, 2008. Proceedings, edited by Roberto Amadio, 35–49. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Action Learning: Research and Practice.

Blog post

Hale, Tom. 2016. “Thieves Accidentally Steal Bottles Of Stoat Anal Gland Oil From Conservation Company.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/thieves-accidently-steal-bottles-of-stoat-anal-gland-oil-from-conservation-company/.

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. 1989. Schedule Delays and Cost Overruns Plague DOD Automated Information Systems. T-IMTEC-89-8. 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

Rollo, Elizabeth. 2013. “Effect of the Stoplight Diet and Mode of Intervention on Triglyceride Production in a Veteran Population.” Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: 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

Vecsey, George. 2009. “Balancing Football and Academic Success.” New York Times, December 9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pilling 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Pilling 2014; Chatterjee and Grosshans 2009).

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

Two authors: (Chatterjee and Grosshans 2009)
Three authors: (Yanagisawa, Yoo, and Sheen 2003)
4 or more authors: (Fryxell et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Action Learning: Research and Practice
Abbreviation	Action Learn.
ISSN (print)	1476-7333
ISSN (online)	1476-7341
Scope	General Business, Management and Accounting Education