How to format your references using the Experimental Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Experimental 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
Turner, M. (2015). Ecology: Mangrove maintenance. Nature, 526(7574), 515.
A journal article with 2 authors
Camerer, C. F., & Fehr, E. (2006). When does “economic man” dominate social behavior? Science (New York, N.Y.), 311(5757), 47–52.
A journal article with 3 authors
Isakov, S. V., Melko, R. G., & Hastings, M. B. (2012). Universal signatures of fractionalized quantum critical points. Science (New York, N.Y.), 335(6065), 193–195.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Foresti, D., Sambatakakis, G., Bottan, S., & Poulikakos, D. (2013). Morphing surfaces enable acoustophoretic contactless transport of ultrahigh-density matter in air. Scientific Reports, 3, 3176.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Bouvier, J.-M., & Campanella, O. H. (2014). Extrusion Processing Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Eskin, E., & Workman, C. (Eds.). (2005). Regulatory Genomics: RECOMB 2004 International Workshop, RRG 2004, San Diego, Ca, USA, March 26-27, 2004, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 3318). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Perret, B. (2007). Reorganizing the Activity Cycle: The Stakes in a New Social Contract. In S. Pennec & J. Légaré (Eds.), Ages, Generations and the Social Contract: The Demographic Challenges Facing the Welfare State (pp. 105–113). Springer Netherlands.

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 Experimental Psychology.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, August 6). First Venomous Frogs Described Use Heads As Deadly Weapons. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/first-venomous-frogs-described-use-heads-deadly-weapons/

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. (1998). Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Strong Leadership and Partnerships Needed to Address Risk of Major Disruptions (T-AIMD-98-266). 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
Moore, C. (2017). Seasonal Temperature Reconstruction for Northeastern Siberia during the Late Pleistocene from High-Resolution Oxygen Isotope Measurements Across Fossil Wood [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Louisiana.

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
Pendleton, I. (1934, March 25). THE HIGHWAY BEAUTIFUL; Private Citizens and State Officials Cooperate to Create Natural Scenery Along Paved Roads. New York Times, DRAMA SCREEN MUSIC RADIO FASHIONS ARTX12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Turner, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Camerer & Fehr, 2006; Turner, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Camerer & Fehr, 2006)
  • Three authors: (Isakov et al., 2012)
  • 6 or more authors: (Foresti et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleExperimental Psychology
AbbreviationExp. Psychol.
ISSN (print)1618-3169
ISSN (online)2190-5142
ScopeArts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
General Medicine
General Psychology
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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