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
García de Abajo, F. J. (2013). Applied physics. Graphene nanophotonics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 339(6122), 917–918.
A journal article with 2 authors
Holme, R., & de Viron, O. (2013). Characterization and implications of intradecadal variations in length of day. Nature, 499(7457), 202–204.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kirk, P. D. W., Babtie, A. C., & Stumpf, M. P. H. (2015). SYSTEMS BIOLOGY. Systems biology (un)certainties. Science (New York, N.Y.), 350(6259), 386–388.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Houze, R. A., Jr, Chen, S. S., Smull, B. F., Lee, W.-C., & Bell, M. M. (2007). Hurricane intensity and eyewall replacement. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5816), 1235–1239.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Cooper, J. D. (2016). Soil Water Measurement. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Schwerdtner Máñez, K., & Poulsen, B. (Eds.). (2016). Perspectives on Oceans Past. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Pattillo, J., Youssef, N., & Butenko, S. (2012). Clique Relaxation Models in Social Network Analysis. In M. T. Thai & P. M. Pardalos (Eds.), Handbook of Optimization in Complex Networks: Communication and Social Networks (pp. 143–162). New York, NY: 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 Political Behavior.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, May 19). How We Made An Octopus-Inspired Surgical Robot Using Coffee. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-we-made-octopus-inspired-surgical-robot-using-coffee/. 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. (2009). School Meal Programs: Changes to Federal Agencies’ Procedures Could Reduce Risk of School Children Consuming Recalled Food (No. GAO-09-649). 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
Holman, R. (2014). Music history pedagogy: Three approaches to teaching a one-semester music history survey course in accordance with the LEAP Initiative (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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
Yablonsky, L. (2012, July 15). Mystery House. New York Times, p. ST3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (García de Abajo 2013).
This sentence cites two references (García de Abajo 2013; Holme and de Viron 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Holme and de Viron 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Houze et al. 2007)

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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