How to format your references using the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 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

McKinney, J. C. (2012). Astronomy. Probing black hole gravity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 337(6097), 916–917.

A journal article with 2 authors

Reynolds, J. D., & Freckleton, R. P. (2005). Ecology. Population dynamics: growing to extremes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5734), 567–568.

A journal article with 3 authors

Roberts, L., Stone, R., & Sugden, A. (2009). The rise of restoration ecology. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5940), 555.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Ludwig, M. Z., Bergman, C., Patel, N. H., & Kreitman, M. (2000). Evidence for stabilizing selection in a eukaryotic enhancer element. Nature, 403(6769), 564–567.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Meier, H. B., Marthinsen, J. E., & Gantenbein, P. A. (2012). Swiss Finance. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cheng, H. M. (Ed.). (2016). Physiology Question-Based Learning: Neurophysiology, Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Systems. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Tenny, L., & Hirani, Z. (2010). Using Entity Framework in ASP.NET. In Z. Hirani (Ed.), Entity Framework 4.0 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (pp. 115–154). Apress.

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 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2017, March 31). Leaded Gasoline Exposure Is Everything We Feared. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/leaded-gasoline-exposure-is-everything-we-feared/

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. (1995). Air Traffic Control: Issues Presented by Proposal to Create a Government Corporation (T-RCED-95-114). 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

Richardson, C. (2005). Edgard Varèse and the Visual Avant-Garde: A Comparative Study of Intégrales and Works of Art by Marcel Duchamp [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Cincinnati.

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

Crow, K. (2002, July 28). Use Any Color Shopping Bag, So Long as It’s Red. New York Times, 145.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McKinney, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (McKinney, 2012; Reynolds & Freckleton, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Reynolds & Freckleton, 2005)
Three authors: (Roberts et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Ludwig et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Abbreviation	J. Exp. Psychol. Gen.
ISSN (print)	0096-3445
ISSN (online)	1939-2222
Scope	Developmental Neuroscience General Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology