How to format your references using the Journal of Finance citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Finance. 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
Houck, Oliver, 2003, Tales from a troubled marriage: science and law in environmental policy, Science (New York, N.Y.) 302, 1926–1929.
A journal article with 2 authors
Köhler, Heinz-R, and Rita Triebskorn, 2013, Wildlife ecotoxicology of pesticides: can we track effects to the population level and beyond?, Science (New York, N.Y.) 341, 759–765.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kaminski, Jennifer A., Vladimir M. Sloutsky, and Andrew F. Heckler, 2008, Learning theory. The advantage of abstract examples in learning math, Science (New York, N.Y.) 320, 454–455.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Miller, Stephen A., Cristiano Collettini, Lauro Chiaraluce, Massimo Cocco, Massimiliano Barchi, and Boris J. P. Kaus, 2004, Aftershocks driven by a high-pressure CO2 source at depth, Nature 427, 724–727.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Malcolm, David, 2012, The British and Irish Short Story Handbook (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK).
An edited book
Garro, Adrienne, ed., 2016, Early Childhood Assessment in School and Clinical Child Psychology (Springer, New York, NY).
A chapter in an edited book
Wu, Ta Yeong, Ningqun Guo, Chee Yang Teh, and Jacqueline Xiao Wen Hay, 2013, Efficiency Issues for Ultrasound, in Ningqun Guo, in Chee Yang Teh, and in Jacqueline Xiao Wen Hay ed.: Advances in Ultrasound Technology for Environmental Remediation. SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht).

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 Journal of Finance.

Blog post
Andrew, Elise, 2015, Can Insects Feed A Hungry Planet?, IFLScience (IFLScience).

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, 2011, Freight Railroad Safety: Results of Rail Industry Survey about Hours of Service Issues (GAO-11-894SP, September 2011), an E-supplement to GAO-11-853, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Sommer, Adam, 2017, How Experiences Influence and Inform School Principals’ Actions to Further Develop Teachers’ Instructional Practice, (George Washington University, Washington, DC).

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
Pols, Mary, 2016, Apples of Contention, New York Times.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Finance
AbbreviationJ. Finance
ISSN (print)0022-1082
ISSN (online)1540-6261
ScopeAccounting
Economics and Econometrics
Finance

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