How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 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

Smith C: Tools for drug discovery: tools of the trade. Nature 2007, 446:219–222.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kaech SM, Ahmed R: Immunology. CD8 T cells remember with a little help. Science 2003, 300:263–265.

A journal article with 3 authors

Heinsohn R, Legge S, Endler JA: Extreme reversed sexual dichromatism in a bird without sex role reversal. Science 2005, 309:617–619.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Li XP, Xia Q, Qu D, Wu TC, Yang DG, Hao WD, Jiang X, Li XM: The dynamic dielectric at a brain functional site and an EM wave approach to functional brain imaging. Sci Rep 2014, 4:6893.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Casadella V, Liu Z, Uzunidis D: Innovation Capabilities and Economic Development in Open Economies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

Rutkowski L, Korytkowski M, Scherer R, Tadeusiewicz R, Zadeh LA, Zurada JM (Eds): Swarm and Evolutionary Computation: International Symposia, SIDE 2012 and EC 2012, Held in Conjunction with ICAISC 2012, Zakopane, Poland, April 29-May 3, 2012. Proceedings. Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Kavousifard A, Samet H: A Novel Method Based on Modified Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm and Artificial Neural Network for Power System Load Prediction. In Emerging Intelligent Technologies in Industry. Edited by Ryżko D, Rybiński H, Gawrysiak P, Kryszkiewicz M. Springer; 2011:35–46.

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 Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew D: These 20 Images Of Earth Over The Past 70 Years Show Why Countries Signed The Paris Agreement. IFLScience 2017,

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: Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Readiness Improving But Much Work Remains to Avoid Disruption of Critical Services. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zitko JA: Effects of Random Cross-Sectioned Distributions, Fiber Misalignment and Interphases in Three-Dimensional Composite Models on Transverse Shear Modulus. 2012,

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 S: A Prosperous Russian City Is Also Fatal for Journalists. New York Times 2003,

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci.
ISSN (print)	2352-1546
Scope