How to format your references using the Mental Health and Physical Activity citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mental Health and Physical Activity. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Giles, J. (2001). Relaxed restrictions blamed for rise in foot and mouth. Nature, 413(6852), 98.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gheiratmand, M., & Mullen, K. T. (2014). Orientation tuning in human colour vision at detection threshold. Scientific Reports, 4, 4285.

A journal article with 3 authors

El-Ali, J., Sorger, P. K., & Jensen, K. F. (2006). Cells on chips. Nature, 442(7101), 403–411.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Harris, W. M., Lombardo, J. J., Nelson, G. J., Lai, B., Wang, S., Vila-Comamala, J., Liu, M., Liu, M., & Chiu, W. K. S. (2014). Three-dimensional microstructural imaging of sulfur poisoning-induced degradation in a Ni-YSZ anode of solid oxide fuel cells. Scientific Reports, 4, 5246.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Labadie, N., Prins, C., & Prodhon, C. (2016). Metaheuristics for Vehicle Routing Problems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Orlandini, D. (2007). Manuale di accreditamento delle strutture diabetologiche (G. D. Bigontina, Ed.; Terza edizione). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Love, J. C., Derrick, S. M., & Wiersema, J. M. (2011). Long Bone Fractures. In S. M. Derrick & J. M. Wiersema (Eds.), Skeletal Atlas of Child Abuse (pp. 69–83). Humana Press.

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 Mental Health and Physical Activity.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, August 16). Sharks Won’t Hunt As Well in Acidifying Oceans. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sharks-wont-hunt-well-acidifying-oceans/

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. (1978). The Challenge of Career Adaptation and Renewal (106027). 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

Than, K. (2015). The impact of companion pets on the well-being of older adults [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

Shpigel, B. (2017, March 25). Dempsey’s Hat Trick Seals a Win and Steadies a World Cup Campaign. New York Times, SP2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Giles, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Gheiratmand & Mullen, 2014; Giles, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Gheiratmand & Mullen, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Harris et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Mental Health and Physical Activity
Abbreviation	Ment. Health Phys. Act.
ISSN (print)	1755-2966
Scope	Psychiatry and Mental health Applied Psychology