How to format your references using the Small Business Economics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Small Business Economics. 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
Sarewitz, D. (2010). Double trouble? To throw cash at science is a mistake. Nature, 468(7321), 135.
A journal article with 2 authors
Brent, R., & Lok, L. (2005). Cell biology. A fishing buddy for hypothesis generators. Science (New York, N.Y.), 308(5721), 504–506.
A journal article with 3 authors
Gustafson, J. L., Lim, D., & Miller, S. J. (2010). Dynamic kinetic resolution of biaryl atropisomers via peptide-catalyzed asymmetric bromination. Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5983), 1251–1255.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Hemerly, A. S., Prasanth, S. G., Siddiqui, K., & Stillman, B. (2009). Orc1 controls centriole and centrosome copy number in human cells. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5915), 789–793.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Paterson, J. C. (2015). Lean Auditing. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Lengstorf, J. (2013). Realtime Web Apps: With HTML5 WebSocket, PHP, and jQuery. (P. Leggetter, Ed.). Berkeley, CA: Apress.
A chapter in an edited book
Moore, G. J., Puglia, F. J., & Gulbinska, M. K. (2014). Lithium-ion Cells for High-End Applications. In M. K. Gulbinska (Ed.), Lithium-ion Battery Materials and Engineering: Current Topics and Problems from the Manufacturing Perspective (pp. 89–113). London: 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 Small Business Economics.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2014, November 7). Oldest European Genome Sequenced. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/oldest-european-genome-sequenced/. 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. (2017). District of Columbia Charter Schools: Multi-Agency Plan Needed to Continue Progress Addressing High and Disproportionate Discipline Rates (No. GAO-17-165). 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
Morr, R. (2015). Age Discrimination: Prejudice Suppression in the Selection Process (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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
Kelly, R. W. (1999, February 15). The Police Department’s 9-Millimeter Revolution. New York Times, p. A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sarewitz 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Brent and Lok 2005; Sarewitz 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Brent and Lok 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Hemerly et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleSmall Business Economics
AbbreviationSmall Bus. Econ.
ISSN (print)0921-898X
ISSN (online)1573-0913
ScopeGeneral Business, Management and Accounting
Economics and Econometrics

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