How to format your references using the The British Journal of Criminology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The British Journal of Criminology (BJC). 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

Cerf, V.G. (2009) ‘The day the Internet age began’, Nature, 461/7268: 1202–1203.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hespos, S.J. and Spelke, E.S. (2004) ‘Conceptual precursors to language’, Nature, 430/6998: 453–456.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sambanis, N., Schulhofer-Wohl, J., and Shayo, M. (2012) ‘Social psychology. Parochialism as a central challenge in counterinsurgency’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 336/6083: 805–808.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Houlahan, J.E., Findlay, C.S., Schmidt, B.R., Meyer, A.H., and Kuzmin, S.L. (2000) ‘Quantitative evidence for global amphibian population declines’, Nature, 404/6779: 752–755.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lütolf-Carroll, C., Antti Pirnes, and Withers LLP (2009) From Innovation to Cash Flows. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Skopina, M. (2016) Multivariate Wavelet Frames, XIII, 248 p. 2 illus p., (A. Krivoshein & V. Protasov, Eds.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Okumura, M. (2015) ‘Techniques’, in Y. Nagata, ed, Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy: Principles and Practices, 45–57. Springer Japan.

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 of Criminology.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, June 12) ‘500-Million-Year-Old Fish Had First Signs of Jaws’, IFLScience. IFLScience.

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 (1989) ADP Modernization: IRS Needs to Assess Design Alternatives for Its Electronic Filing System. 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

Kidder, E.O. (2014) ‘Self-administered HPV Testing as a Cervical Cancer Screening Option: Exploring the Perspectives of Hispanic and Arab Women in the United States’. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Barron, J. (2016, September 16) ‘A Band Helps the East Village Heal After a Devastating Gas Explosion’, New York Times, p. A14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cerf 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Hespos and Spelke 2004; Cerf 2009).

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

Two authors: (Hespos and Spelke 2004)
Three or more authors: (Houlahan et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	The British Journal of Criminology
ISSN (print)	0007-0955
ISSN (online)	1464-3529
Scope