How to format your references using the Biological Psychology citation style

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

Patterson, D. J. (2009). Ecology. Seeing the big picture on microbe distribution. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5947), 1506–1507.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gaensler, B. M., & Frail, D. A. (2000). A large age for the pulsar B1757-24 from an upper limit on its proper motion. Nature, 406(6792), 158–160.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chesler, P. M., Liu, H., & Adams, A. (2013). Holographic vortex liquids and superfluid turbulence. Science (New York, N.Y.), 341(6144), 368–372.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Johnson, D. S., Mortazavi, A., Myers, R. M., & Wold, B. (2007). Genome-wide mapping of in vivo protein-DNA interactions. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5830), 1497–1502.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Johnson, J. L. (1997). Probability and Statistics for Computer Science. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Fatmi, M., Collmer, A., Iacobellis, N. S., Mansfield, J. W., Murillo, J., Schaad, N. W., & Ullrich, M. (Eds.). (2008). Pseudomonas syringae Pathovars and Related Pathogens – Identification, Epidemiology and Genomics. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Naumov, A. D., Timokhina, N. I., Litvinchuk, A. V., Vereshchako, G. G., Khodosovskaya, A. M., Sushko, S. N., & Kadukova, E. M. (2013). Radioprotective Properties of Selenomethionine with Methionine, Extracts from Basidium Fungi and Exogenous DNA. In G. N. Pierce, V. I. Mizin, & A. Omelchenko (Eds.), Advanced Bioactive Compounds Countering the Effects of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Agents: Strategies to Counter Biological Damage (pp. 55–69). Springer Netherlands.

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 Biological Psychology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2017, April 4). Fast Radio Bursts Definitely Come From Outer Space. 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. (1985). School District Officials Face Problems in Dealing With Asbestos in Their Schools (RCED-85-91). 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

Britt, A. L. (2014). The Long-Term Impact of Preschool Education on Student Achievement [Doctoral dissertation]. Lindenwood 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

Rosenberg, E., & Stack, L. (2017, May 18). Times Square Chaos as Driver Kills a Woman and Injures 22. 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 (Patterson, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Gaensler & Frail, 2000; Patterson, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Gaensler & Frail, 2000)
Three authors: (Chesler et al., 2013)
6 or more authors: (Johnson et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Psychology
Abbreviation	Biol. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0301-0511
Scope	General Neuroscience Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology