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

Bova B (2000) Eternal Verities, Eternal Questions. Nature 404, 439.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gaillardet J and Galy A (2008) Atmospheric Science. Himalaya--Carbon Sink or Source? Science (New York, N.Y.) 320, 1727–1728.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nielsen SB, Stephenson R and Thomsen E (2007) Dynamics of Mid-Palaeocene North Atlantic Rifting Linked with European Intra-Plate Deformations. Nature 450, 1071–1074.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Martinez E et al. (2009) Climate-Driven Basin-Scale Decadal Oscillations of Oceanic Phytoplankton. Science (New York, N.Y.) 326, 1253–1256.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baines P, Ferraro J and Rogers P (2010) The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing 1660 - 1789. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Hort N et al. (eds) (2016) Magnesium Technology 2013. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Ajuwon AJ (2015) Access to Bioethics Education in Nigeria: Past History, Current Situation, and Opportunities for the Future. In ten Have HAMJ (ed.), Bioethics Education in a Global Perspective: Challenges in Global Bioethics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 65–71.

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) Greenland’s Meltwater Rivers Are The Largest Contributor to Rising Sea Levels. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/environment/greenland-s-meltwater-rivers-are-largest-contributor-rising-sea-levels/ (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 (1988) Job Training Partnership Act: Participants, Services, and Outcomes. 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

Othmanawny G (2017) ‘Soaked and Unsoaked Performance of Crushed Gravel and Limestone Aggregates’. Doctoral dissertation, Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois 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

Somaiya R (2015) Reporters in Las Vegas Try to Crack Case of Who Really Owns Their Newspaper. New York Times, December 15, B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bova 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Bova 2000; Gaillardet and Galy 2008).

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

Two authors: (Gaillardet and Galy 2008)
Three authors: (Nielsen, Stephenson, and Thomsen 2007)
4 or more authors: (Martinez et al. 2009)

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