How to format your references using the Business History citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Business History. 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	Download the output style file
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

Marcus, Gary F. “Before the Word.” Nature 431, no. 7010 (October 14, 2004): 745.

A journal article with 2 authors

Myers, Ransom A., and Boris Worm. “Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities.” Nature 423, no. 6937 (May 15, 2003): 280–83.

A journal article with 3 authors

King, Nicole, Christopher T. Hittinger, and Sean B. Carroll. “Evolution of Key Cell Signaling and Adhesion Protein Families Predates Animal Origins.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 301, no. 5631 (July 18, 2003): 361–63.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Bocquet, Nicolas, Hugues Nury, Marc Baaden, Chantal Le Poupon, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Marc Delarue, and Pierre-Jean Corringer. “X-Ray Structure of a Pentameric Ligand-Gated Ion Channel in an Apparently Open Conformation.” Nature 457, no. 7225 (January 1, 2009): 111–14.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hahn-Deinstrop, Elke. Dünnschicht-Chromatographie. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2006.

An edited book

Aral, Ali. Applications of Q-Calculus in Operator Theory. Edited by Vijay Gupta and Ravi P. Agarwal. New York, NY: Springer, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Fichter, Klaus, and Severin Beucker. “Managing Innovation Communities: Best Practice Reports.” In Innovation Communities: Teamworking of Key Persons - A Success Factor in Radical Innovation, edited by Klaus Fichter and Severin Beucker, 227–67. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2012.

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 Business History.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. “Could Measles Cure Cancer? Uh, Not Exactly….” IFLScience. IFLScience, May 18, 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/could-measles-cure-cancer-uh-not-exactly…/.

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. “Interagency Laboratory Use: Current Practices and Recurring Problems.” Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 4, 1979.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dixon, Laura Kellie. “Tracing Anthropogenic Wastes: Detection of Fluorescent Optical Brighteners in a Gradient of Natural Organic Matter Fluorescence.” Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, 2009.

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

Kelly, David A. “Take Me to Starbucks If You Can’t Amuse Me.” New York Times, December 5, 2007.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	Business History
Abbreviation	Bus. Hist.
ISSN (print)	0007-6791
ISSN (online)	1743-7938
Scope	History Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous) Business and International Management