How to format your references using the Professional Psychology: Research and Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. 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 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

Powell, K. (2003). High-tech, high society. Nature, 426(6967), 720–721.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nisbet, E., & Weiss, R. (2010). Atmospheric science. Top-down versus bottom-up. Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5983), 1241–1243.

A journal article with 3 authors

Morales, R., Di Matteo, T., & Aste, T. (2014). Dependency structure and scaling properties of financial time series are related. Scientific Reports, 4, 4589.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Muttoni, G., Erba, E., Kent, D. V., & Bachtadse, V. (2005). Mesozoic Alpine facies deposition as a result of past latitudinal plate motion. Nature, 434(7029), 59–63.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Klee, L. (2015). International Construction Contract Law. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Wu, W., & Yu, H.-S. (Eds.). (2006). Modern Trends in Geomechanics (Vol. 106). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Mobus, G. E., & Kalton, M. C. (2015). Networks: Connections Within and Without. In M. C. Kalton (Ed.), Principles of Systems Science (pp. 137–168). Springer.

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 Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2017, January 19). Coldest Temperature In The Universe Created In American Laboratory. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/coldest-temperature-universe-created-american-laboratory/

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. (2006). Information Technology: Customs Has Made Progress on Automated Commercial Environment System, but It Faces Long-Standing Management Challenges and New Risks (GAO-06-580). 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

Bhatnagar, A. (2012). Buckling and weight optimization for non-coupled antisymmetric laminates [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. (2006, April 23). QUICK BITE/Edison; Sandwich for Five? New York Times, 14NJ24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Powell, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Nisbet & Weiss, 2010; Powell, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Nisbet & Weiss, 2010)
Three authors: (Morales et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Muttoni et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Professional Psychology: Research and Practice
Abbreviation	Prof. Psychol. Res. Pr.
ISSN (print)	0735-7028
ISSN (online)	1939-1323
Scope	General Psychology