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

Baker M. Antibody anarchy: A call to order. Nature 2015;527:545–551.

A journal article with 2 authors

Johansson LC, Norberg RA. Delta-wing function of webbed feet gives hydrodynamic lift for swimming propulsion in birds. Nature 2003;424:65–68.

A journal article with 3 authors

Werfel J, Petersen K, Nagpal R. Designing collective behavior in a termite-inspired robot construction team. Science 2014;343:754–758.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Engin F, Nguyen T, Yermalovich A, Hotamisligil GS. Aberrant islet unfolded protein response in type 2 diabetes. Sci Rep 2014;4:4054.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Paret D. Flexray and its Applications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 2012.

An edited book

Briscoe J. Nanostructured Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters. Dunn S, (Ed). Cham: Springer International Publishing 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang J, Yin X, Lan H. Improved Carrier Frequency Estimation Based on Autocorrelation. In Wu Y, (Ed) Advances in Computer, Communication, Control and Automation. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2012:23–29.

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

Fang J. The Same Gene Blackens Moths And Colors Butterflies. IFLScience 2016. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/one-gene-blackens-moths-and-colors-butterflies/. 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. No Child Left Behind Act: Assistance from Education Could Help States Better Measure Progress of Students with Limited English Proficiency. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bankapura S. Packet adaptive routing in communication network. 2016.

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

Schwartz J. Max Ritvo, 25, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight. New York Times. August 27, 2016:A14.

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)