How to format your references using the Police Practice and Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Police Practice and Research. 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
Richter, F. M. (2011). Isotope fractionation in silicate melts by thermal diffusion. Nature, 472(7341), E1; discussion E2-3.
A journal article with 2 authors
Löytynoja, A., & Goldman, N. (2009). Evolution. Uniting alignments and trees. Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5934), 1528–1529.
A journal article with 3 authors
Robertson, J. L., Kolmakova-Partensky, L., & Miller, C. (2010). Design, function and structure of a monomeric ClC transporter. Nature, 468(7325), 844–847.
A journal article with 21 or more authors
van Delden, R. A., ter Wiel, M. K. J., Pollard, M. M., Vicario, J., Koumura, N., & Feringa, B. L. (2005). Unidirectional molecular motor on a gold surface. Nature, 437(7063), 1337–1340.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Adámek, J. (1991). Foundations of Coding. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Lippert, R. K., Walby, K., Warren, I., & Palmer, D. (Eds.). (2016). National Security, Surveillance and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective. Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Ancey, V., & Fréguin-Gresh, S. (2015). Families, Labor and Farms. In J.-M. Sourisseau (Ed.), Family Farming and the Worlds to Come (pp. 57–69). Springer Netherlands.

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 Police Practice and Research.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014, July 18). 10 Science Jokes for Nerds. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/10-science-jokes-nerds/

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). Tax Systems Modernization: Management and Technical Weaknesses Must Be Overcome To Achieve Success (T-AIMD-96-75). 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
Robinson, L. M. (2001). Using Time-Resolved Photoluminescence Spectroscopy to Examine Exciton Dynamics in II-VI Semiconductor Nanostructures [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Cincinnati.

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
Seymour, M. (2015, April 24). How About a Nightcap? New York Times, BR11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Richter, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Löytynoja & Goldman, 2009; Richter, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Löytynoja & Goldman, 2009)
  • Three or more authors: (van Delden et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titlePolice Practice and Research
AbbreviationPolice Pract. Res.
ISSN (print)1561-4263
ISSN (online)1477-271X
ScopeSocial Sciences (miscellaneous)
Law

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