How to format your references using the Behavior Analysis in Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Behavior Analysis in 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Moskvitch, K. (2014). Astronomy: To catch a cosmic ray. Nature, 514(7520), 20–22.
A journal article with 2 authors
Dickinson, J. L., & Koenig, W. D. (2003). Ecology and evolution. Desperately seeking similarity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5627), 1887–1889.
A journal article with 3 authors
Pelechano, V., Wei, W., & Steinmetz, L. M. (2013). Extensive transcriptional heterogeneity revealed by isoform profiling. Nature, 497(7447), 127–131.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Lu, S., Seong, J., Wang, Y., Chang, S.-C., Eichorst, J. P., Ouyang, M., et al. (2014). Decipher the dynamic coordination between enzymatic activity and structural modulation at focal adhesions in living cells. Scientific reports, 4, 5756.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Selyanin, M. A., Boykov, P. Y., Khabarov, V. N., & Polyak, F. (2015). Hyaluronic Acid. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Schönthaler, F. (2012). Business Processes for Business Communities: Modeling Languages, Methods, Tools. (G. Vossen, A. Oberweis, & T. Karle, Eds.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Beal, D. N., & Bandyopadhyay, P. R. (2010). A harmonic model of hydrodynamic forces produced by a flapping fin. In G. K. Taylor, M. S. Triantafyllou, & C. Tropea (Eds.), Animal Locomotion (pp. 37–44). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Behavior Analysis in Practice.

Blog post
Hale, T. (2016, November 11). Court Drops Charges Against Cecil The Lion Hunter. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/court-drops-charges-against-cecil-the-lion-hunter/. Accessed 30 October 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. (1977). NASA Report May Overstate the Economic Benefits of Research and Development Spending (No. PAD-78-18). 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
Crowell, M. L. (2016). A Case Study into the Perception of World Language Study of All Stakeholders in a Suburban Midwest School District (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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. (2017, April 20). Mets Win as Bruce Drives in Five Runs With Two Homers. New York Times, p. B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Moskvitch 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Dickinson and Koenig 2003; Moskvitch 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Dickinson and Koenig 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Lu et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleBehavior Analysis in Practice
AbbreviationBehav. Anal. Pract.
ISSN (print)1998-1929
ISSN (online)2196-8934
Scope

Other styles