How to format your references using the Methods in Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Methods in 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	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

Tidwell, L., 2004. Scientists and societies. First, find your postdocs. Nature 428, 678.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gollisch, T., Meister, M., 2008. Rapid neural coding in the retina with relative spike latencies. Science 319, 1108–1111.

A journal article with 3 authors

Barnham, K.W., Nelson, J., Stevens, R.A., 2000. Did civil reactors supply plutonium for weapons? Nature 407, 833–834.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Arcizet, O., Cohadon, P.-F., Briant, T., Pinard, M., Heidmann, A., 2006. Radiation-pressure cooling and optomechanical instability of a micromirror. Nature 444, 71–74.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

de Almeida, J.P.M., Maunder, E.A.W., 2017. Equilibrium Finite Element Formulations. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Quirk, T.J., 2013. Excel 2010 for Biological and Life Sciences Statistics: A Guide to Solving Practical Problems. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Miyazaki, K., Takekuma, S.-I., 2012. On the equivalence between the rejective core and the dividend equilibrium: a note, in: Kusuoka, S., Maruyama, T. (Eds.), Advances in Mathematical Economics Volume 16, Advances in Mathematical Economics. Springer Japan, Tokyo, pp. 111–117.

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 Methods in Psychology.

Blog post

Carpineti, A., 2017. There Are Dangerous Asteroids Hiding Among The Taurid Meteor Shower [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/there-are-dangerous-asteroids-hiding-among-the-taurid-meteor-shower/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1996. SSA Initiatives to Identify Coaching (No. HEHS-96-96R). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Tuinenga, J.M., 2010. John Corigliano’s Sonata for violin and piano: An analysis of context, structure, and style (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Sisario, B., 2017. Concert Giants Seek Gold in New York Grit. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tidwell, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Gollisch and Meister, 2008; Tidwell, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Gollisch and Meister, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Arcizet et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Methods in Psychology
ISSN (print)	2590-2601
Scope