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

Lewis K: Antibiotics: Recover the lost art of drug discovery. Nature 2012, 485:439–440.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schorlemmer D, Wiemer S: Earth science: microseismicity data forecast rupture area. Nature 2005, 434:1086.

A journal article with 3 authors

Okuda S, Freinkman E, Kahne D: Cytoplasmic ATP hydrolysis powers transport of lipopolysaccharide across the periplasm in E. coli. Science 2012, 338:1214–1217.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Yasui D, Miyano M, Cai S, Varga-Weisz P, Kohwi-Shigematsu T: SATB1 targets chromatin remodelling to regulate genes over long distances. Nature 2002, 419:641–645.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

bauforumstahl e.V.: Beispiele zur Bemessung von Stahltragwerken nach DIN EN 1993 Eurocode 3. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2011.

An edited book

Gargaud M, Amils R, Quintanilla JC, Cleaves HJ (jim), Irvine WM, Pinti DL, Viso M (Eds): Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Megha S, Basu U, Rahman MH, Kav NNV: The Role of Long Non-coding RNAs in Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants. In Elucidation of Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomics Perspectives, Volume 2. Edited by Pandey GK. Springer; 2015:93–106.

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: 16 Events From 2016 That Should Give You Hope For The Future. 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: Highway Trust Fund Expenditures on Purposes Other than Construction and Maintenance of Highways and Bridges during Fiscal Years 2004-2008. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Schaff S: What characterizes and impacts student transformational learning in a community college work placement context. 2013,

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

Detrick B: Not Everyone Is a Football Fan. New York Times 2016,

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