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

DeLong, E.F. Microbiology. Life on the Thermodynamic Edge. Science 2007, 317, 327–328.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pomerantz, R.T.; O’Donnell, M. The Replisome Uses MRNA as a Primer after Colliding with RNA Polymerase. Nature 2008, 456, 762–766.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jiang, Q.-X.; Wang, D.-N.; MacKinnon, R. Electron Microscopic Analysis of KvAP Voltage-Dependent K+ Channels in an Open Conformation. Nature 2004, 430, 806–810.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Hiddingh, L.; Raktoe, R.S.; Jeuken, J.; Hulleman, E.; Noske, D.P.; Kaspers, G.J.L.; Vandertop, W.P.; Wesseling, P.; Wurdinger, T. Identification of Temozolomide Resistance Factors in Glioblastoma via Integrative MiRNA/MRNA Regulatory Network Analysis. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 5260.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kassapoglou, C. Modeling the Effect of Damage in Composite Structures; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2015; ISBN 9781119013228.

An edited book

Paul, W.J. System Architecture: An Ordinary Engineering Discipline; Baumann, C., Lutsyk, P., Schmaltz, S., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; ISBN 9783319430645.

A chapter in an edited book

Graf, E.; Frommholz, I.; Lalmas, M.; van Rijsbergen, K. Knowledge Modeling in Prior Art Search. In Advances in Multidisciplinary Retrieval: First Information Retrieval Facility Conference, IRFC 2010, Vienna, Austria, May 31, 2010. Proceedings; Cunningham, H., Hanbury, A., Rüger, S., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010; pp. 31–46 ISBN 9783642130830.

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

Luntz, S. Ignoring Hormones And Sex Is Undermining Clinical Trials Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/ignoring-hormones-and-sex-is-undermining-clinical-trials/ (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 Embedded Computer Systems: F-14D Aircraft Software Is Not Reliable; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1992;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Khojandi, N. Investigating Secondary Infections and Their Impact on Host Fitness in the Dictyostelium-Burkholderia Symbiosis System. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University: Edwardsville, IL, 2017.

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

Oestreich, J.R. Among the Dictators and Commandants Are Sopranos and Baritones. New York Times 2016, C2.

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