How to format your references using the Behavioural Processes citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Behavioural Processes. 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
Emanuel, K., 2008. Retrospective. Edward N. Lorenz (1917-2008). Science 320, 1025.
A journal article with 2 authors
Dranovsky, A., Leonardo, E.D., 2015. Neuroscience: The power of positivity. Nature 522, 294–295.
A journal article with 3 authors
Spencer, J.P., Dineva, E., Smith, L.B., 2009. Comment on “Infants’ perseverative search errors are induced by pragmatic misinterpretation.” Science 325, 1624; author reply 1624.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Sun, Y., Li, P., Qiao, Y., Li, Y., 2014. Time-dependent gas-liquid interaction in molecular-sized nanopores. Sci. Rep. 4, 6547.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Lev, B., Gu, F., 2016. The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Dronamraju, K.R., 2006. Malaria: Genetic and Evolutionary Aspects, Emerging Infectious Diseases of the 21st Century. Springer US, Boston, MA.
A chapter in an edited book
Zaki, M.H., Hasan, O., Tahar, S., Al-Sammane, G., 2015. Framework for Formally Verifying Analog and Mixed-Signal Designs, in: Fakhfakh, M., Tlelo-Cuautle, E., Siarry, P. (Eds.), Computational Intelligence in Analog and Mixed-Signal (AMS) and Radio-Frequency (RF) Circuit Design. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 115–145.

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 Behavioural Processes.

Blog post
Hamilton, K., 2016. Could We One Day Heal The Mind By Taking Control Of Our Dreams? [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/could-we-one-day-heal-the-mind-by-taking-control-of-our-dreams/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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. Homeland Security: Improvements in Managing Research and Development Could Help Reduce Inefficiencies and Costs (No. GAO-11-464T). 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
Kargbo, A.H., 2019. An Approach to Dynamic Resource Allocation for Electric Power Disaster Response Management (Doctoral dissertation). 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
Wagner, J., 2016. Mets Quickly Lose Niese to Injury but Still Get a Win. New York Times B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Emanuel, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Dranovsky and Leonardo, 2015; Emanuel, 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Dranovsky and Leonardo, 2015)
  • Three or more authors: (Sun et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleBehavioural Processes
AbbreviationBehav. Processes
ISSN (print)0376-6357
ScopeAnimal Science and Zoology
General Medicine
Behavioral Neuroscience

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