How to format your references using the American Journal of Health Behavior citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Health Behavior (AJHB). 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Stringer C. Palaeontology: The 100-year mystery of Piltdown Man. Nature 2012;492:177–179.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rudolph ML, Zhong S. Does quadrupole stability imply LLSVP fixity? Nature 2013;503:E3-4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Møller PR, Nielsen JG, Fossen I. Fish migration: Patagonian toothfish found off Greenland. Nature 2003;421:599.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mori T, Koyama Y, Maeda N, et al. Ultrastructural localization of adiponectin protein in vasculature of normal and atherosclerotic mice. Sci Rep 2014;4:4895.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baber RL. The Language of Mathematics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2011.

An edited book

Lu Y, Essex M, Roberts B, (Eds). Emerging Infections in Asia. Boston, MA: Springer US 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Niewiesk S. Current Animal Models: Cotton Rat Animal Model. In Griffin DE, Oldstone MBA, (Eds) Measles: Pathogenesis and Control. Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer 2009:89–110.

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 American Journal of Health Behavior.

Blog post

Andrew E. Drones Could Be Used To Fly Blood Samples To Remote Medical Centers. IFLScience 2015. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/drones-could-be-used-fly-blood-samples-remote-medical-centers/. Accessed October 30, 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. Weather Satellites: Planning for the Geostationary Satellite Program Needs More Attention. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1997.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Nguyen JR. Staging Vietnamese America: Music and the performance of Vietnamese American identities. 2012.

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. Mets’ Starter Fails to Last 2 Innings, and He May Not Get to Go Any Longer. New York Times. September 13, 2016:B11.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Health Behavior
Abbreviation	Am. J. Health Behav.
ISSN (print)	1945-7359
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Social Psychology Health(social science)