How to format your references using the American Psychologist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Psychologist. 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

Simmons, R. M. (2000). Prophets without honour? Nature, 407(6806), 839.

A journal article with 2 authors

Habibi, M. K., & Lu, Y. (2014). Crack propagation in bamboo’s hierarchical cellular structure. Scientific Reports, 4, 5598.

A journal article with 3 authors

Maret, S., Bergin, E. A., & Lada, C. J. (2006). A low fraction of nitrogen in molecular form in a dark cloud. Nature, 442(7101), 425–427.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Sato, Y., Yoshikawa, A., Yamagata, A., Mimura, H., Yamashita, M., Ookata, K., Nureki, O., Iwai, K., Komada, M., & Fukai, S. (2008). Structural basis for specific cleavage of Lys 63-linked polyubiquitin chains. Nature, 455(7211), 358–362.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Exposito, E., & Diop, C. (2014). Smart SOA Platforms in Cloud Computing Architectures. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Liapis, C. D., Balzer, K., Benedetti-Valentini, F., & Fernandes e Fernandes, J. (Eds.). (2007). Vascular Surgery. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

von Bernstorff, J. (2016). Peace and Global Justice through Prosecuting the Crime of Aggression? Kelsen and Morgenthau on the Nuremberg Trials and the International Judicial Function. In D. A. J. Telman (Ed.), Hans Kelsen in America - Selective Affinities and the Mysteries of Academic Influence (pp. 85–99). Springer International Publishing.

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 American Psychologist.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, February 3). Skin Patch Powers Electronics Using Muscle Movements. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/skin-patch-powers-electronics-using-muscle-movements/

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. (1984). Attrition of Scientists and Engineers at Seven Agencies (RCED-84-142). 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

Schmidt, M. P. (2013). Being here [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

Rojas, R. (2015, September 3). N.Y.U. Takes Cosby’s Name Off Workshop About Film. New York Times, A28.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Simmons, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Habibi & Lu, 2014; Simmons, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Habibi & Lu, 2014)
Three authors: (Maret et al., 2006)
6 or more authors: (Sato et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Psychologist
Abbreviation	Am. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0003-066X
ISSN (online)	1935-990X
Scope	General Medicine General Psychology