How to format your references using the British Journal of Political Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Political Science (BJPS). 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Cleland AN (2015) PHYSICS. Pumping up the Quantum. Science (New York, N.Y.) 350, 280.

A journal article with 2 authors

Morrison SJ and Kimble J (2006) Asymmetric and Symmetric Stem-Cell Divisions in Development and Cancer. Nature 441, 1068–1074.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang M, Atkinson KR and Baughman RH (2004) Multifunctional Carbon Nanotube Yarns by Downsizing an Ancient Technology. Science (New York, N.Y.) 306, 1358–1361.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang X et al. (2014) Explosive Synchronization as a Process of Explosive Percolation in Dynamical Phase Space. Scientific reports 4, 5200.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ahamed SV (2006) Intelligent Internet Knowledge Networks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ladikas M et al. (eds) (2015) Science and Technology Governance and Ethics: A Global Perspective from Europe, India and China. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

David G (2005) Open Questions on the Mumford-Shah Functional. In Benedicks M et al. (eds), Perspectives in Analysis: Essays in Honor of Lennart Carleson’s 75th Birthday. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 37–49.

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 British Journal of Political Science.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) NASA Footage Shows Strange ‘Black Hole’ In The Sun. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-footage-shows-strange-black-hole-in-the-sun/ (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 (1974) Problems in Providing Education Overseas for Dependents of U.S. Personnel. 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

McGaughey KM (2017) ‘Textural Juxtaposition: Representing the Natural and the Human in Elements’. Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Kishkovsky S and Smale A (2015) Foes of Russia in Crimea Block Shipments of Food. New York Times, September 22, A11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cleland 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Cleland 2015; Morrison and Kimble 2006).

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

Two authors: (Morrison and Kimble 2006)
Three authors: (Zhang, Atkinson, and Baughman 2004)
4 or more authors: (Zhang et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Political Science
Abbreviation	Br. J. Polit. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0007-1234
ISSN (online)	1469-2112
Scope	Sociology and Political Science