How to format your references using the British Journal of Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Muchhala, N. (2006). Nectar bat stows huge tongue in its rib cage. Nature, 444(7120), 701–702.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bezemer, T. M., & van der Putten, W. H. (2007). Ecology: diversity and stability in plant communities. Nature, 446(7135), E6-7; discussion E7-8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Adini, Y., Sagi, D., & Tsodyks, M. (2002). Context-enabled learning in the human visual system. Nature, 415(6873), 790–793.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Dejea, C. M., Fathi, P., Craig, J. M., Boleij, A., Taddese, R., Geis, A. L., Wu, X., DeStefano Shields, C. E., Hechenbleikner, E. M., Huso, D. L., Anders, R. A., Giardiello, F. M., Wick, E. C., Wang, H., Wu, S., Pardoll, D. M., Housseau, F., & Sears, C. L. (2018). Patients with familial adenomatous polyposis harbor colonic biofilms containing tumorigenic bacteria. Science (New York, N.Y.), 359(6375), 592–597.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Neupert, R. (2011). French Animation History. Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Sugiman, T., Gergen, K. J., Wagner, W., & Yamada, Y. (Eds.). (2008). Meaning in Action: Constructions, Narratives, and Representations. Springer Japan.

A chapter in an edited book

O’Connell, D. C., & Kowal, S. (2008). Rhetoric. In S. Kowal (Ed.), Communicating with One Another: Toward a Psychology of Spontaneous Spoken Discourse (pp. 1–10). 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 British Journal of Psychology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2013, December 3). Gene Therapy Provides Significant Antiviral Results Against HIV. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/gene-therapy-provides-significant-antiviral-results-against-hiv/

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. (1989). Aging Aircraft: FAA Needs Comprehensive Plan to Coordinate Government and Industry Actions (RCED-90-75). 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

Gerhart, T. (2013). Convex optimization techniques and their application in hyperspectral video processing [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

Baker, L. (2008, September 25). How Powerful Is Your Workout? New York Times, G9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Muchhala, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bezemer & van der Putten, 2007; Muchhala, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Bezemer & van der Putten, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Dejea et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Psychology
Abbreviation	Br. J. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0007-1269
ISSN (online)	2044-8295
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) General Psychology