How to format your references using the Political Behavior citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Political Behavior. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Di Noia, J. M. (2015). Molecular biology: Unequal opportunity during class switching. Nature, 525(7567), 44–45.
A journal article with 2 authors
Utz, M., & Landers, J. (2010). Chemistry. Magnetic resonance and microfluidics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6007), 1056–1058.
A journal article with 3 authors
Davies, A., Kemp, A. E. S., & Pike, J. (2009). Late Cretaceous seasonal ocean variability from the Arctic. Nature, 460(7252), 254–258.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Meyer-Luehmann, M., Spires-Jones, T. L., Prada, C., Garcia-Alloza, M., de Calignon, A., Rozkalne, A., et al. (2008). Rapid appearance and local toxicity of amyloid-beta plaques in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Nature, 451(7179), 720–724.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Wei, J. (2012). Great Inventions that Changed the World. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Bali, R. K., Bos, L., Gibbons, M. C., & Ibell, S. (Eds.). (2014). Rare Diseases in the Age of Health 2.0 (Vol. 4). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Balks, M. R., & Zabowski, D. (2016). Soils of Forests. In D. Zabowski (Ed.), Celebrating Soil: Discovering Soils and Landscapes (pp. 65–94). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Political Behavior.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2015, September 23). Researchers Uncover The Human “Death Smell.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/what-cadaver-dogs-are-smelling/. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (1984). New Directions for Federal Programs To Aid Mathematics and Science Teaching (No. PEMD-84-5). 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
Oppenheim, J. N. (2017). Examination of Oncology Summer Camp Attendance, Psychosocial Adjustment, and Perceived Social Support Among Pediatric Cancer Patients and Siblings (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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
Greenhouse, L. (2007, January 6). Justices to Consider Impact of Mental Illness on Death Penalty. New York Times, p. A12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Di Noia 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Di Noia 2015; Utz and Landers 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Utz and Landers 2010)
  • Three or more authors: (Meyer-Luehmann et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titlePolitical Behavior
AbbreviationPolit. Behav.
ISSN (print)0190-9320
ISSN (online)1573-6687
ScopeSociology and Political Science

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