How to format your references using the The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The British Journal for the Philosophy of 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

Owens, B. [2015]: ‘Drug Development: The Treasure Chest’, Nature, 525, pp. S6-8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kedar, S. and Webb, F. H. [2005]: ‘Ocean Science. The Ocean’s Seismic Hum’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 307, pp. 682–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bustamante, C. D., Burchard, E. G. and De la Vega, F. M. [2011]: ‘Genomics for the World’, Nature, 475, pp. 163–5.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wang, D., Guo, W., Hu, J., Liu, F., Chen, L., Du, S. and Tang, Z. [2013]: ‘Estimating Atomic Sizes with Raman Spectroscopy’, Scientific Reports, 3, p. 1486.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety [2012]: ‘Guidelines for Engineering Design for Process Safety’, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Stolerman, I. P. and Price, L. H. (eds) [2015]: ‘Encyclopedia of Psychopharmacology’, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Bandyopadhyay, B., Deepak, F. and Kim, K.-S. [2009]: ‘Integral Sliding Mode Based Composite Nonlinear Feedback Control’, in F. Deepak and K.-S. Kim (eds), Sliding Mode Control Using Novel Sliding Surfaces, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 83–95.

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 British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. [2017, January 3]: ‘Why Was A Leap Second Added To 2016?’, IFLScience, IFLScience, <https://www.iflscience.com/space/why-was-a-leap-second-added-to-2016/>.

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 [2008]: ‘Air Traffic Control: FAA Uses Earned Value Techniques to Help Manage Information Technology Acquisitions, but Needs to Clarify Policy and Strengthen Oversight’, 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

Taylor, M. S. [2015]: ‘Too Close to the Knives: Children’s Rights, Parental Authority, and Best Interests in the Context of Elective Pediatric Surgeries’, Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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. [2017, February 26]: ‘Mets Evaluate Their Options at First Base After Duda Is Sidelined by Hip Stiffness’, New York Times, p. SP3 p. SP3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Owens [2015]).
This sentence cites two references (Kedar and Webb [2005]; Owens [2015]).

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

Two authors: (Kedar and Webb [2005])
Three or more authors: (Wang et al. [2013])

About the journal

Full journal title	The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Abbreviation	Br. J. Philos. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0007-0882
ISSN (online)	1464-3537
Scope	History History and Philosophy of Science Philosophy