How to format your references using the The Behavior Analyst citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Behavior Analyst. 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 Lorenzo, E. (2015). Climate science: The future of coastal ocean upwelling. Nature, 518(7539), 310–311.
A journal article with 2 authors
Schwabe, R. F., & Wang, T. C. (2012). Cancer. Bacteria deliver a genotoxic hit. Science (New York, N.Y.), 338(6103), 52–53.
A journal article with 3 authors
Rakitzis, T. P., van den Brom, A. J., & Janssen, M. H. M. (2004). Directional dynamics in the photodissociation of oriented molecules. Science (New York, N.Y.), 303(5665), 1852–1854.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Titova, L. V., Ayesheshim, A. K., Golubov, A., Rodriguez-Juarez, R., Woycicki, R., Hegmann, F. A., & Kovalchuk, O. (2013). Intense THz pulses down-regulate genes associated with skin cancer and psoriasis: a new therapeutic avenue? Scientific reports, 3, 2363.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Johansen, G. A., & Jackson, P. (2005). Radioisotope Gauges for Industrial Process Measurements. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Acharjya, D. P., Dehuri, S., & Sanyal, S. (Eds.). (2015). Computational Intelligence for Big Data Analysis: Frontier Advances and Applications (Vol. 19). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Rikowski, R. (2011). Digitisation. In R. Rikowski (Ed.), Digitisation Perspectives (pp. 65–86). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 The Behavior Analyst.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, March 17). Company Claims Their Flying Car Will Hit Markets In Two Years. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/company-claims-their-flying-car-will-hit-markets-two-years/. 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. (2013). Public Transit: Survey of Public Transit Agency Officials on Contracting Out Public Transit Operations and Other Services (GAO-13-824SP, September 2013), an E-supplement to GAO-13-782 (No. GAO-13-824SP). 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
Szurgyi, A. A. (2012). Leadership competencies required of Army officers to counter the Improvised Explosive Device threat (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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
Hubbard, B. (2017, May 20). With Harleys and Hamburgers, Saudis Salute U.S. on Trump’s Visit. 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 Lorenzo 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Di Lorenzo 2015; Schwabe and Wang 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Schwabe and Wang 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Titova et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleThe Behavior Analyst
AbbreviationBehav. Anal.
ISSN (print)0738-6729
ISSN (online)2196-8918
ScopeClinical Psychology
Social Psychology

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