How to format your references using the American Journal of Health Behavior citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Health Behavior (AJHB). 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 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

Kaiser D. History: From blackboards to bombs. Nature 2015;523:523–525.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rothenberg KH, Terry SF. Human genetics. Before it’s too late--addressing fear of genetic information. Science 2002;297:196–197.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gagné J-P, Rouleau M, Poirier GG. Structural biology. PARP-1 activation--bringing the pieces together. Science 2012;336:678–679.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Zhang C, Xu J, Chui PC, Wong KKY. Parametric spectro-temporal analyzer (PASTA) for real-time optical spectrum observation. Sci Rep 2013;3:2064.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Assing D, Calé S. Mobile Access Safety. Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2013.

An edited book

Bennett ST. Laboratory Hemostasis: A Practical Guide for Pathologists. 2nd ed. 2015. Lehman CM, Rodgers GM, (Eds). Cham: Springer International Publishing 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Lo C-F. The Soft Codification of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial. In Wang W-Y, (Ed) Codification in International Perspective: Selected Papers from the 2nd IACL Thematic Conference. Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2014:61–73.

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 American Journal of Health Behavior.

Blog post

Carpineti A. Scientists Have Found A Meteorite From The Edge Of The Solar System. IFLScience 2016. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-have-found-a-meteorite-from-the-edge-of-the-solar-system/. Accessed October 30, 2018.

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. High Speed Passenger Rail: Future Development Will Depend on Addressing Financial and Other Challenges and Establishing a Clear Federal Role. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kaminsky E. Schumann’s Op. 14: Original, Revised and Edited (“Concerto without Orchestra” versus Piano Sonata No. 3). 2006.

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 G. College Athletes Move Concussions Into the Courtroom. New York Times. November 30, 2011:B14.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Health Behavior
Abbreviation	Am. J. Health Behav.
ISSN (print)	1945-7359
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Social Psychology Health(social science)