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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Kirby, S. H. (2000). Taking the temperature of slabs. Nature, 403(6765), 31, 33–34.
A journal article with 2 authors
Spilianakis, C. G., & Flavell, R. A. (2006). Molecular biology. Managing associations between different chromosomes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 312(5771), 207–208.
A journal article with 3 authors
Galli, S. J., Tsai, M., & Piliponsky, A. M. (2008). The development of allergic inflammation. Nature, 454(7203), 445–454.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Shen, S.-Z., Crowley, J. L., Wang, Y., Bowring, S. A., Erwin, D. H., Sadler, P. M., Cao, C.-Q., Rothman, D. H., Henderson, C. M., Ramezani, J., Zhang, H., Shen, Y., Wang, X.-D., Wang, W., Mu, L., Li, W.-Z., Tang, Y.-G., Liu, X.-L., Liu, L.-J., … Jin, Y.-G. (2011). Calibrating the end-Permian mass extinction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6061), 1367–1372.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Barone, S., & Franco, E. L. (2012). Statistical and Managerial Techniques for Six Sigma Methodology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Corchado, E., Yin, H., Botti, V., & Fyfe, C. (Eds.). (2006). Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning – IDEAL 2006: 7th International Conference, Burgos, Spain, September 20-23, 2006. Proceedings (Vol. 4224). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Lavery, L. A., & Armstrong, D. G. (2012). Clinical Examination and Risk Classification of the Diabetic Foot. In A. Veves, J. M. Giurini, & F. W. LoGerfo (Eds.), The Diabetic Foot: Medical and Surgical Management (pp. 59–74). 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, September 17). Are Chimps Natural Born Killers? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/are-chimps-natural-born-killers/

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). Subcontractor’s Problems With Prime Contractor at Kennedy Space Center (B-192017). 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
Liang, M. (2012). Information, communication and wayfinding: Technology shows us the world [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
Feeney, K. (2008, January 20). Food That Recalls a Childhood. New York Times, NJ12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kirby, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Kirby, 2000; Spilianakis & Flavell, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Spilianakis & Flavell, 2006)
  • Three authors: (Galli et al., 2008)
  • 6 or more authors: (Shen et al., 2011)

About the journal

Full journal titleMental Health and Physical Activity
AbbreviationMent. Health Phys. Act.
ISSN (print)1755-2966
ScopePsychiatry and Mental health
Applied Psychology

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