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

Smaglik, P. (2003). Fact or fiction? Nature, 425(6954), 219.

A journal article with 2 authors

Chin, G., & Culotta, E. (2014). The science of inequality. What the numbers tell us. Introduction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6186), 818–821.

A journal article with 3 authors

Duplessy, J. C., Roche, D. M., & Kageyama, M. (2007). The deep ocean during the last interglacial period. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5821), 89–91.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hale, M. L., Lurz, P. W., Shirley, M. D., Rushton, S., Fuller, R. M., & Wolff, K. (2001). Impact of landscape management on the genetic structure of red squirrel populations. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5538), 2246–2248.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Möller, G. (2012). Geotechnik. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Ghosh, T. K. (2011). Energy Resources and Systems: Volume 2: Renewable Resources (M. A. Prelas, Ed.). Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Hardesty, D. L. (2009). Historical Archaeology and the Environment: A North American Perspective. In D. Gaimster & T. Majewski (Eds.), International Handbook of Historical Archaeology (pp. 67–75). 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

Evans, K. (2017, February 10). Tiny Robot Drones Developed To Help Declining Bees Pollinate Plants. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/tiny-robot-drones-developed-to-help-declining-bees-pollinate-plants/

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. (1993). Los Angeles Metro Rail System (OSI-94-6R). 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

Gonzalez, S. N. (2010). Analysis of the impact of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act on California’s children: A report card on the CalWORKs program [Doctoral dissertation]. 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

Greenhouse, L. (2005, October 6). Justices Explore U.S. Authority Over States on Assisted Suicide. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Chin & Culotta, 2014; Smaglik, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Chin & Culotta, 2014)
Three authors: (Duplessy et al., 2007)
6 or more authors: (Hale et al., 2001)

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