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

Palmer, R., 2011. Drugs: Lines of defence. Nature 480, S9-10.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ding, T., Schloss, P.D., 2014. Dynamics and associations of microbial community types across the human body. Nature 509, 357–360.

A journal article with 3 authors

Otto, S., Furlan, R.L.E., Sanders, J.K.M., 2002. Selection and amplification of hosts from dynamic combinatorial libraries of macrocyclic disulfides. Science 297, 590–593.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Orme, C.A., Noy, A., Wierzbicki, A., McBride, M.T., Grantham, M., Teng, H.H., Dove, P.M., DeYoreo, J.J., 2001. Formation of chiral morphologies through selective binding of amino acids to calcite surface steps. Nature 411, 775–779.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wren, C., 2011. Concise Guide to Pediatric Arrhythmias. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Mancuso, C., Jommi, C., D’Onza, F. (Eds.), 2012. Unsaturated Soils: Research and Applications: Volume 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Mulkidjanian, A.Y., 2015. Abiotic Photosynthesis, in: Gargaud, M., Irvine, W.M., Amils, R., Cleaves, H.J. (jim), Pinti, D.L., Quintanilla, J.C., Rouan, D., Spohn, T., Tirard, S., Viso, M. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 26–28.

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

Andrew, E., 2013. Scientists at the National Ignition Facility have produced a record fusion energy yield, bringing us closer to fusion power [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 1993. Federal Research: Aging Federal Laboratories Need Repairs and Upgrades (No. RCED-93-203). 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

Di Giacomo, F.A., 2010. Education amidst transition: The case of Romania (Doctoral dissertation). University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Kovaleski, S.F., Flegenheimer, M., 2014. Christie Allies Joked of Disrupting Traffic at a Rabbi’s House. New York Times A18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Palmer, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Ding and Schloss, 2014; Palmer, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Ding and Schloss, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Orme et al., 2001)

About the journal

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