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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Social 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

Peik, E. (2005). Physics. Logical spectroscopy. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5735), 710–711.

A journal article with 2 authors

Steinberger, B., & Torsvik, T. H. (2008). Absolute plate motions and true polar wander in the absence of hotspot tracks. Nature, 452(7187), 620–623.

A journal article with 3 authors

Raihani, N. J., Grutter, A. S., & Bshary, R. (2010). Punishers benefit from third-party punishment in fish. Science (New York, N.Y.), 327(5962), 171.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Bryant, Z., Stone, M. D., Gore, J., Smith, S. B., Cozzarelli, N. R., & Bustamante, C. (2003). Structural transitions and elasticity from torque measurements on DNA. Nature, 424(6946), 338–341.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kriegel, J. (2016). Unfairly Labeled. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Dingli, A. (2015). The New Digital Natives: Cutting the Chord (D. Seychell, Ed.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu, R., Zhang, H., & Yang, Z. (2013). How Does a Researcher Become an Entrepreneur in the High-Tech Industrial Cluster? A Case Study. In J. J. M. Ferreira, M. Raposo, R. Rutten, & A. Varga (Eds.), Cooperation, Clusters, and Knowledge Transfer: Universities and Firms Towards Regional Competitiveness (pp. 59–80). 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 Social Psychology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, October 3). Satellites Reveal Previously Unknown Seafloor Features. 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. (1982). Success of the Programed School Input Program Justifies Expansion (FPCD-82-53). 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

Smith, C. A. (2014). Teacher and Student Perceptions of Bullying at Leclaire School [Doctoral dissertation]. Southern Illinois 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

Alexander, K. (2002, December 1). A Different Shade of Green. New York Times, 638.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Peik, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Peik, 2005; Steinberger & Torsvik, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Steinberger & Torsvik, 2008)
Three authors: (Raihani et al., 2010)
6 or more authors: (Bryant et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Social Psychology
Abbreviation	Br. J. Soc. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0144-6665
ISSN (online)	2044-8309
Scope	Social Psychology

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