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

Goodson KE. Materials science. Ordering up the minimum thermal conductivity of solids. Science 2007;315:342–343.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang H-Y, Zhang Y-Q. Processing and characterisation of a novel electropolymerized silk fibroin hydrogel membrane. Sci Rep 2014;4:6182.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ben-David O, Cohen G, Fineberg J. The dynamics of the onset of frictional slip. Science 2010;330:211–214.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Nalbant P, Hodgson L, Kraynov V, et al. Activation of endogenous Cdc42 visualized in living cells. Science 2004;305:1615–1619.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fjeld RA, Eisenberg NA, Compton KL. Quantitative Environmental Risk Analysis for Human Health. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007.

An edited book

Goffredo S, Dubinsky Z, (Eds). The Cnidaria, Past, Present and Future: The world of Medusa and her sisters. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Mizutani T, Igarashi S, Ikeda Y, Shio M. Labeled @-Calculus: Formalism for Time-Concerned Human Factors. In Calmet J, Ida T, Wang D, (Eds) Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation: 8th International Conference, AISC 2006 Beijing, China, September 20-22, 2006 Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2006:25–39.

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

Luntz S. Secrets Of A “Nude Plant” Could Help Grow Food On Mars. IFLScience 2015. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/secrets-nude-plant-could-help-grow-food-mars/. 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. Telecommunications: Greater Involvement Needed by FCC in the Management and Oversight of the E-Rate Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jackson MA. An action research study of collaborative relationhips between psychotherapists and medical doctors. 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

Wagner J. Backup Catcher’s Unlikely Three-Run Blast Helps Nationals Even Series. New York Times. October 10, 2016:D3.

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)

Research and Writing Guides