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

Marris E. On high alert. Nature 2010;466:S2-3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shizuka D, Lyon BE. Coots use hatch order to learn to recognize and reject conspecific brood parasitic chicks. Nature 2010;463:223–226.

A journal article with 3 authors

Murdoch W, Briggs CJ, Swarbrick S. Host suppression and stability in a parasitoid-host system: experimental demonstration. Science 2005;309:610–613.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Sheng W, Yu G, Fang H, et al. Regional patterns of (15)N natural abundance in forest ecosystems along a large transect in eastern China. Sci Rep 2014;4:4249.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Balan V, Neagu M. Jet Single-Time Lagrange Geometry and Its Applications. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2011.

An edited book

Lapidus ML. Fractal Geometry, Complex Dimensions and Zeta Functions: Geometry and Spectra of Fractal Strings. Frankenhuijsen M van, (Ed). New York, NY: Springer 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Kim H-J, Seo KK, Lee H-K, Kim J. Clinical Anatomy of the Midface for Filler Injection. In Seo KK, Lee H-K, Kim J, (Eds) Clinical Anatomy of the Face for Filler and Botulinum Toxin Injection. Singapore: Springer 2016:119–151.

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

Hale T. Can Humans Sense A “Force Field” Around Their Body? IFLScience 2016. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/can-humans-sense-a-force-field-around-their-body/. 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. Aircraft Maintenance: Additional FAA Oversight Needed of Aging Aircraft Repairs (Vol. I). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1991.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lord V. Defining eating disorder recovery: A qualitative approach. 2015.

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

Paulson M. ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ Is Closing on Broadway. New York Times. September 6, 2017:C3.

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)