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

Ledford, H. (2006). Liquid fuel synthesis: making it up as you go along. Nature, 444(7120), 677–678.

A journal article with 2 authors

Menon, A. K., & Levine, T. P. (2015). Cell biology: Countercurrents in lipid flow. Nature, 525(7568), 191–192.

A journal article with 3 authors

Freeman, C., Ostle, N., & Kang, H. (2001). An enzymic “latch” on a global carbon store. Nature, 409(6817), 149.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Yu, X., Yu, Y., Liu, B., Luo, K., Kong, W., Mao, P., & Yu, X.-F. (2003). Induction of APOBEC3G ubiquitination and degradation by an HIV-1 Vif-Cul5-SCF complex. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5647), 1056–1060.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stacey, W. M. (2012). Fusion Plasma Physics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Conti, R. (Ed.). (2011). Calculus of Variations, Classical and Modern (Vol. 39). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

García-Magariño, I., Gómez-Sanz, J. J., & Fuentes-Fernández, R. (2009). Model Transformation By-Example: An Algorithm for Generating Many-to-Many Transformation Rules in Several Model Transformation Languages. In R. F. Paige (Ed.), Theory and Practice of Model Transformations: Second International Conference, ICMT 2009, Zurich, Switzerland, June 29-30, 2009. Proceedings (pp. 52–66). 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 Biological Psychology.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2015, April 6). Water Droplets Pop Off Gecko Skin Like Popcorn. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/water-droplets-pop-gecko-skin-popcorn/

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. (1988). ADP Budget: Trends in SSA’s Information Technology Systems Budget (IMTEC-88-33FS). 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

Wurster, K. W. (2010). Management matter? Effects of charcoal production management on woodland regeneration in Senegal [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Gregory Mankiw, N. (2016, January 29). A Better Way to Grade Presidents. New York Times, BU5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ledford, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Ledford, 2006; Menon & Levine, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Menon & Levine, 2015)
Three authors: (Freeman et al., 2001)
6 or more authors: (Yu et al., 2003)

About the journal

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

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