How to format your references using the Acta Psychologica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Psychologica. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Andersson, S. G. E. (2006). Genetics. The bacterial world gets smaller. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314(5797), 259–260.

A journal article with 2 authors

Chiu, C., & Weliky, M. (2003). Neuroscience. Synaptic modification by vision. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5627), 1890–1891.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhao, J., Liu, Q., & Wang, X. (2014). Competitive dynamics on complex networks. Scientific Reports, 4, 5858.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Xu, X.-D., Cheng, H., Chen, W.-H., Cheng, S.-X., Zhuo, R.-X., & Zhang, X.-Z. (2013). In situ recognition of cell-surface glycans and targeted imaging of cancer cells. Scientific Reports, 3, 2679.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sue, D. W. (2003). Overcoming Our Racism. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Heintze, H.-J., & Zwitter, A. (Eds.). (2011). International Law and Humanitarian Assistance: A Crosscut Through Legal Issues Pertaining to Humanitarianism. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Zipser, M. C., & Dummer, R. (2011). Epidemiology of Histocytoses. In R. Dummer, M. R. Pittelkow, K. Iwatsuki, A. Green, & N. M. Elwan (Eds.), Skin Cancer - A World-Wide Perspective (pp. 33–34). Springer.

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 Acta Psychologica.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2017, March 17). Climate Change Is Already Harming Your Health. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/climate-change-harming-health-now/

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. (1992). Aviation Safety: Progress on FAA Safety Indicators Program Slow and Challenges Remain (IMTEC-92-57). 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

Parihar, R. (2004). Characterization of the Natural Killer Cell Cytokine Response to Antibody-Coated Tumor Cells [Doctoral dissertation]. Ohio State 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

Markowitz, J. C. (2016, October 15). There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Neuroscience. New York Times, A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Andersson, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Andersson, 2006; Chiu & Weliky, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Chiu & Weliky, 2003)
Three authors: (Zhao et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Xu et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Psychologica
Abbreviation	Acta Psychol. (Amst.)
ISSN (print)	0001-6918
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) General Medicine Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology