How to format your references using the Business Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Business Research. 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

McCann, K. S. 2000. The diversity-stability debate. Nature 405: 228–233.

A journal article with 2 authors

Thiel, P. A., and J. M. Dubois. 2000. Quasicrystals. Electrons in a strange sea. Nature 406: 570–1, 573.

A journal article with 3 authors

Henikoff, S., K. Ahmad, and H. S. Malik. 2001. The centromere paradox: stable inheritance with rapidly evolving DNA. Science (New York, N.Y.) 293: 1098–1102.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Mazmanian, Sarkis K., Eric P. Skaar, Andrew H. Gaspar, Munir Humayun, Piotr Gornicki, Joanna Jelenska, Andrzej Joachmiak, Dominique M. Missiakas, and Olaf Schneewind. 2003. Passage of heme-iron across the envelope of Staphylococcus aureus. Science (New York, N.Y.) 299: 906–909.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sutt, Jüri, Irene Lill, and Olev Müürsepp. 2013. The Engineer’s Manual of Construction Site Planning. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.

An edited book

Devillers, James, ed. 2009. Ecotoxicology Modeling. Vol. 2. Emerging Topics in Ecotoxicology, Principles, Approaches and Perspectives. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Stigler, Johannes, Martin Lundqvist, Tommy Cedervall, Kenneth Dawson, and Iseult Lynch. 2010. Protein Interactions with Microballoons: Consequences for Biocompatibility and Application as Contrast Agents. In Ultrasound Contrast Agents: Targeting and Processing Methods for Theranostics, ed. Gaio Paradossi, Paolo Pellegretti, and Andrea Trucco, 53–66. Milano: Springer.

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2015. Ancient Caiman Was A Champion Chomper. IFLScience. IFLScience. February 27.

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. 2016. Transportation Security: TSA Has Taken Actions to Address Transportation Security Acquisition Reform Act Requirements. GAO-16-285. 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

Day, Kari C. 2017. CPA Perceptions of Human Skills for Professional Competency Development Needs. Doctoral dissertation, Scottsdale, AZ: Northcentral 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

Kishkovsky, Sophia. 2008. Pregnant Inmate’s Plight Inspires Plea to Medvedev. New York Times, November 19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McCann 2000).
This sentence cites two references (McCann 2000; Thiel and Dubois 2000).

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

Two authors: (Thiel and Dubois 2000)
Three or more authors: (Mazmanian et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Business Research
Abbreviation	Bus. Res.
ISSN (print)	2198-3402
ISSN (online)	2198-2627
Scope