How to format your references using the British Journal of Political Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Political Science (BJPS). 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

Pasachoff JM (2009) Solar Eclipses as an Astrophysical Laboratory. Nature 459, 789–795.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gros J and Tabin CJ (2014) Vertebrate Limb Bud Formation Is Initiated by Localized Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition. Science (New York, N.Y.) 343, 1253–1256.

A journal article with 3 authors

Smith ZM, Delgutte B and Oxenham AJ (2002) Chimaeric Sounds Reveal Dichotomies in Auditory Perception. Nature 416, 87–90.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pfitzner C et al. (2014) Digital-Direct-RT-PCR: A Sensitive and Specific Method for Quantification of CTC in Patients with Cervical Carcinoma. Scientific reports 4, 3970.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Liu H and Li G (2006) OFDM-Based Broadband Wireless Networks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bailey SE and Hublin J-J (eds) (2007) Dental Perspectives on Human Evolution: State of the Art Research in Dental Paleoanthropology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Ashour-Abdalla M (2015) A Simulation Study of the Relationship Between Tail Dynamics and the Aurora. In Cowley FRS SWH, Southwood D and Mitton S (eds), Magnetospheric Plasma Physics: The Impact of Jim Dungey’s Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 109–127.

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 British Journal of Political Science.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Meet The Woman With Two Vaginas. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/meet-woman-two-vginas/ (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 (2014) Fiscal Year 2014 Agreed-Upon Procedures: Excise Tax Distributions to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and the Highway Trust Fund. 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

Yoon T (2008) ‘Object Recognition Based on Multi-Agent Spatial Reasoning’. Doctoral dissertation, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University.

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

Robles F, Alvarez L and Yee V (2017) Entire State Shudders as Hurricane Irma Roars Into Florida. New York Times, September 11, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pasachoff 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Gros and Tabin 2014; Pasachoff 2009).

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

Two authors: (Gros and Tabin 2014)
Three authors: (Smith, Delgutte, and Oxenham 2002)
4 or more authors: (Pfitzner et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Political Science
Abbreviation	Br. J. Polit. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0007-1234
ISSN (online)	1469-2112
Scope	Sociology and Political Science