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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Personality and 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	Download the output style file
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

Hejnol, A. (2014). Evolutionary biology: Excitation over jelly nerves. Nature, 510(7503), 38–39.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kleinteich, T., & Gorb, S. N. (2014). Tongue adhesion in the horned frog Ceratophrys sp. Scientific Reports, 4, 5225.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chaudhuri, J., Khuong, C., & Alt, F. W. (2004). Replication protein A interacts with AID to promote deamination of somatic hypermutation targets. Nature, 430(7003), 992–998.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Tu, L., Tai, W. C. S., Chen, L., & Banfield, D. K. (2008). Signal-mediated dynamic retention of glycosyltransferases in the Golgi. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5887), 404–407.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Meyer, V. R. (2013). Pitfalls and Errors of HPLC in Pictures. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Spink, A., & Jansen, B. J. (Eds.). (2005). Web Search: Public Searching of the Web (Vol. 6). Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Egamberdieva, D. (2016). Bacillus spp.: A Potential Plant Growth Stimulator and Biocontrol Agent Under Hostile Environmental Conditions. In M. T. Islam, M. Rahman, P. Pandey, C. K. Jha, & A. Aeron (Eds.), Bacilli and Agrobiotechnology (pp. 91–111). Springer International Publishing.

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 Personality and Social Psychology.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014, March 3). Cancer Patient’s Leg Attached To His Arm To Keep It Alive During Surgery. 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. (1988). Factors Affecting Concentration in the Airline Industry (T-RCED-88-65). 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

Yaceczko, S. D. (2017). A Telehealth Nutrition Manual for an Online Intensive Behavioral Weight Management Program [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Dinardo, K. (2017, June 21). For Dianne Whelan, No Trail Is Too Long or Hard. New York Times, TR2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hejnol, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Hejnol, 2014; Kleinteich & Gorb, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Kleinteich & Gorb, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Tu et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Abbreviation	J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0022-3514
ISSN (online)	1939-1315
Scope	Social Psychology Sociology and Political Science