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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Huch, Meritxell. “Regenerative Biology: The Versatile and Plastic Liver.” Nature 517, no. 7533 (January 8, 2015): 155–56.
A journal article with 2 authors
Liu, Hong Yan, and Xiaohu Gao. “A Universal Protein Tag for Delivery of SiRNA-Aptamer Chimeras.” Scientific Reports 3 (November 7, 2013): 3129.
A journal article with 3 authors
Zwerger, M., H. J. Briegel, and W. Dür. “Hybrid Architecture for Encoded Measurement-Based Quantum Computation.” Scientific Reports 4 (June 20, 2014): 5364.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Weijers, Johan W. H., Enno Schefuss, Stefan Schouten, and Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté. “Coupled Thermal and Hydrological Evolution of Tropical Africa over the Last Deglaciation.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 315, no. 5819 (March 23, 2007): 1701–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Elliott, Charles H., and Laura L. Smith. Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies®. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010.
An edited book
Timofeev, Vladislav, and Daniele Sanvitto, eds. Exciton Polaritons in Microcavities: New Frontiers. Vol. 172. Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2012.
A chapter in an edited book
Mariette, Jérôme, Madalina Olteanu, Julien Boelaert, and Nathalie Villa-Vialaneix. “Bagged Kernel SOM.” In Advances in Self-Organizing Maps and Learning Vector Quantization: Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop, WSOM 2014, Mittweida, Germany, July, 2-4, 2014, edited by Thomas Villmann, Frank-Michael Schleif, Marika Kaden, and Mandy Lange, 45–54. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2014.

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. “Motorcycle Accident Causes A Man’s Heart To Rotate In His Chest.” IFLScience. IFLScience, May 19, 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/motorcycle-accident-causes-man’s-heart-rotate-his-chest/.

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. “Applying Agreed-Upon Procedures: Airport and Airway Trust Fund Excise Taxes.” Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 4, 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Davies, Glynis L. “An Analysis of Pat Metheny’s and Lyle Mays’s ‘Third Wind’: Arranging Techniques and Performance Considerations.” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2015.

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
Davey, Monica. “Drop in Violence Gives a City Hope.” New York Times, May 30, 2017.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal titleBusiness History
AbbreviationBus. Hist.
ISSN (print)0007-6791
ISSN (online)1743-7938
ScopeHistory
Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous)
Business and International Management

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