How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
[1]
G.P. Dietl, Ecology: Different worlds, Nature 529 (2016) 29–30.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
E. Dekel, U. Alon, Optimality and evolutionary tuning of the expression level of a protein, Nature 436 (2005) 588–592.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
A. Kessler, R. Halitschke, I.T. Baldwin, Silencing the jasmonate cascade: induced plant defenses and insect populations, Science 305 (2004) 665–668.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
J. Baker, M. Bizzarro, N. Wittig, J. Connelly, H. Haack, Early planetesimal melting from an age of 4.5662 Gyr for differentiated meteorites, Nature 436 (2005) 1127–1131.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
W. Chin, Reservoir Engineering in Modern Oilfields, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2016.
An edited book
[1]
O. Arino, M.L. Hbid, E.A. Dads, eds., Delay Differential Equations and Applications, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2006.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
H.G. Matthies, Structural Damage and Risk Assessment and Uncertainty Quantification, in: A. Ibrahimbegovic, M. Zlatar (Eds.), Damage Assessment and Reconstruction after War or Natural Disaster, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2009: pp. 95–108.

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 Current Opinion in Psychology.

Blog post
[1]
E. Andrew, Where Did HIV Come From?, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/new-insights-origin-hiv-pandemic/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, Management Issues at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1991.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
E.P. Rhoads, Knowledge management practices in U.S. federal agencies: The catalyst for E-Government transformation, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 2006.

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
[1]
J. Gorman, Nature’s Escape Artists Build Living Towers, New York Times (2017) D4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleCurrent Opinion in Psychology
AbbreviationCurr. Opin. Psychol.
ISSN (print)2352-250X
Scope

Other styles