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

Alberts B (2003) DNA Replication and Recombination. Nature 421, 431–435.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jiao L and Liu X (2015) Structural Basis of Histone H3K27 Trimethylation by an Active Polycomb Repressive Complex 2. Science (New York, N.Y.) 350, aac4383.

A journal article with 3 authors

Anderson PW, Brinkman WF and Huse DA (2005) Thermodynamics of an Incommensurate Quantum Crystal. Science (New York, N.Y.) 310, 1164–1166.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Grisendi S et al. (2005) Role of Nucleophosmin in Embryonic Development and Tumorigenesis. Nature 437, 147–153.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mory M (2013) Fluid Mechanics for Chemical Engineering. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kallio KP, Mills S and Skelton T (eds) (2016) Politics, Citizenship and Rights, 1st ed. 2016. Singapore: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

von Weizsäcker EU (2014) Contagious Knowledge: Contagion as a Quality Criterion for Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science. In von Weizsäcker EU (ed.), Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker: A Pioneer on Environmental, Climate and Energy Policies. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 34–51.

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

Carpineti A (2016) Watch An Entire Lake Disappear Down A Hole. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/environment/watch-lava-tube-draining-lake/ (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 (1994) Elementary School Children: Many Change Schools Frequently, Harming Their Education. 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

Neal DJ (2009) ‘Prehospital Patient Triage in Mass Casualty Incidents: An Engineering Management Analysis and Prototype Strategy Recommendation’. Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington 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

Williams J (2017) The Way We Were (and Are and Could Be). New York Times, January 19, BR4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Alberts 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Alberts 2003; Jiao and Liu 2015).

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

Two authors: (Jiao and Liu 2015)
Three authors: (Anderson, Brinkman, and Huse 2005)
4 or more authors: (Grisendi et al. 2005)

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

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