How to format your references using the Behavioral Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Behavioral Sciences. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Macilwain, C. World View: Talking the Talk. Nature 2010, 465, 867.

A journal article with 2 authors

Palmer, L.; Milhollin, G. Nuclear Safety. Brazil’s Nuclear Puzzle. Science 2004, 306, 617.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang, J.Y.; Liu, G.; Sun, J. Crystallization-Aided Extraordinary Plastic Deformation in Nanolayered Crystalline Cu/Amorphous Cu-Zr Micropillars. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 2324.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zofall, M.; Fischer, T.; Zhang, K.; Zhou, M.; Cui, B.; Veenstra, T.D.; Grewal, S.I.S. Histone H2A.Z Cooperates with RNAi and Heterochromatin Factors to Suppress Antisense RNAs. Nature 2009, 461, 419–422.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cauvin, C.; Escobar, F.; Serradj, A. New Approaches in Thematic Cartography; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2010; ISBN 9781118558010.

An edited book

Advanced Computational Methods for Knowledge Engineering: Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Applications - ICCSAMA 2015; Le Thi, H.A., Nguyen, N.T., Do, T.V., Eds.; Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; Vol. 358; ISBN 9783319179957.

A chapter in an edited book

Harpe, P.; Hegt, H.; van Roermund, A. Smart DA Conversion. In Smart AD and DA Conversion; Hegt, H., Harpe, P., Eds.; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2010; pp. 19–40 ISBN 9789048190416.

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 Behavioral Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, D. Venus Has Very Few Volcanoes – Weirdly, This Might Be Why It’s As Hot As Hell Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/space/venus-has-very-few-volcanoes-weirdly-this-might-be-why-its-as-hot-as-hell/ (accessed on 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 Telecommunications: Challenges to Assessing and Improving Telecommunications for Native Americans on Tribal Lands; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2006;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

BenVau, L. Effects of Larval Nosema Ceranae Infection on Adult Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera) Morphology and Physiology. Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego: La Jolla, CA, 2014.

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

Billard, M. Scouting Report. New York Times 2010, E5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Behavioral Sciences
Abbreviation	Behav. Sci. (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2076-328X
Scope