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

Shaffer, Catherine H. 2006. “The Charge-up Man.” Nature 444 (7119): 652.

A journal article with 2 authors

Matsumoto, Kenji, and Keiji Tanaka. 2004. “Neuroscience. Conflict and Cognitive Control.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 303 (5660): 969–970.

A journal article with 3 authors

Walden, Helen, Michael S. Podgorski, and Brenda A. Schulman. 2003. “Insights into the Ubiquitin Transfer Cascade from the Structure of the Activating Enzyme for NEDD8.” Nature 422 (6929): 330–334.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

He, Ying, Christopher R. Jones, Nobuhiro Fujiki, Ying Xu, Bin Guo, Jimmy L. Holder Jr, Moritz J. Rossner, Seiji Nishino, and Ying-Hui Fu. 2009. “The Transcriptional Repressor DEC2 Regulates Sleep Length in Mammals.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 325 (5942): 866–870.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tran, Jonathan. 2010. The Vietnam War and Theologies of Memory. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Amusia, Miron Ya. 2015. Theory of Heavy-Fermion Compounds: Theory of Strongly Correlated Fermi-Systems. Edited by Konstantin G. Popov, Vasily R. Shaginyan, and Vladimir A. Stephanovich. Vol. 182. Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Morris, Matthew, and Sean M. Rogers. 2014. “Integrating Phenotypic Plasticity Within an Ecological Genomics Framework: Recent Insights from the Genomics, Evolution, Ecology, and Fitness of Plasticity.” In Ecological Genomics: Ecology and the Evolution of Genes and Genomes, edited by Christian R. Landry and Nadia Aubin-Horth, 73–105. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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

Andrew, Elise. 2015. “Transylvanian Music Festival Offers Ticket Discount For Blood.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/transylvanian-music-festival-offers-ticket-discount-blood/.

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. 2005. Progress of the DD(X) Destroyer Program. GAO-05-752R. 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

Hongxia, Duan. 2005. “Social Process of Environmental Risk Perception, Preferences of Risk Management and Public Participation in Decision Making: A Cross-Cultural Study Between the United States and China.” Doctoral dissertation, Columbus, OH: Ohio State 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

Saslow, Linda. 2007. “Suffolk Schools to Say Goodbye to DARE.” New York Times, November 25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Shaffer 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Shaffer 2006; Matsumoto and Tanaka 2004).

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

Two authors: (Matsumoto and Tanaka 2004)
Three authors: (Walden, Podgorski, and Schulman 2003)
4 or more authors: (He et al. 2009)

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