How to format your references using the Current Psychology citation style

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

Khalil, A. M. (2009). Journal club. A geneticist views two theories of X-chromosome inactivation in a broad context. Nature, 458(7236), 263.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415(6868), 137–140.

A journal article with 3 authors

Meza, L. R., Das, S., & Greer, J. R. (2014). Strong, lightweight, and recoverable three-dimensional ceramic nanolattices. Science (New York, N.Y.), 345(6202), 1322–1326.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hashimoto, H., Horton, J. R., Zhang, X., Bostick, M., Jacobsen, S. E., & Cheng, X. (2008). The SRA domain of UHRF1 flips 5-methylcytosine out of the DNA helix. Nature, 455(7214), 826–829.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sehgal, V. (2011). Supply Chain as Strategic Asset. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Allison, B. Z., Dunne, S., Leeb, R., Del R. Millán, J., & Nijholt, A. (Eds.). (2013). Towards Practical Brain-Computer Interfaces: Bridging the Gap from Research to Real-World Applications. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hu, H., Li, J., & Chen, H. (2016). Qualitative Interview for Chinese Medicine Research: Challenges and Prospects. In S.-W. Leung & H. Hu (Eds.), Evidence-based Research Methods for Chinese Medicine (pp. 65–77). Singapore: 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 Current Psychology.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016, August 3). Scientists Have Found The Switch That Sends The Brain To Sleep. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-have-found-the-switch-that-sends-the-brain-to-sleep/. Accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. (1993). Poor Preschool-Aged Children: Numbers Increase but Most Not in Preschool (No. HRD-93-111BR). Washington, DC: 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

Harper, N. R. (2017). The Relationship between Worry Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and True Memory, False Memory, and Metamemory (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Koblin, J. (2017, October 20). Actor Takes On Netflix Over Documentary on Drug Kingpin. New York Times, p. B4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Khalil 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Fehr and Gächter 2002; Khalil 2009).

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

Two authors: (Fehr and Gächter 2002)
Three or more authors: (Hashimoto et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Current Psychology
Abbreviation	Curr. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	1046-1310
ISSN (online)	1936-4733
Scope	General Psychology

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