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:

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
Sudbery, P. (2002). Cell biology. When wee meets whi. Science (New York, N.Y.), 297(5580), 351–352.
A journal article with 2 authors
Ricardo, S., & Lehmann, R. (2009). An ABC transporter controls export of a Drosophila germ cell attractant. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5916), 943–946.
A journal article with 3 authors
Mookherjee, M., Stixrude, L., & Karki, B. (2008). Hydrous silicate melt at high pressure. Nature, 452(7190), 983–986.
A journal article with 21 or more authors
Waldvogel, D., van Gelderen, P., Muellbacher, W., Ziemann, U., Immisch, I., & Hallett, M. (2000). The relative metabolic demand of inhibition and excitation. Nature, 406(6799), 995–998.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Barron, R. F., & Barron, B. R. (2011). Design for Thermal Stresses. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Kurz, A., Lenisa, M., & Tarlecki, A. (Eds.). (2009). Algebra and Coalgebra in Computer Science: Third International Conference, CALCO 2009, Udine, Italy, September 7-10, 2009. Proceedings (Vol. 5728). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Li, W., Tanaka, Y., & Okamura, H. (2014). IL-18. In T. Yoshimoto & T. Yoshimoto (Eds.), Cytokine Frontiers: Regulation of Immune Responses in Health and Disease (pp. 103–123). Springer Japan.

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
O`Callaghan, J. (2016, November 4). China Launches New Heavy-Lift Rocket As It Sets Its Sights On Moon And Mars. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/china-launches-new-long-march-5-heavy-lift-rocket/

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. (2008). Commercial Drivers: Certification Process for Drivers with Serious Medical Conditions (GAO-08-1030T). 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
Boos, A. L. (2015). The post-abortion experience: A content analysis [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
Brantley, B. (2017, August 17). Listening to van Gogh. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sudbery, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Ricardo & Lehmann, 2009; Sudbery, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Ricardo & Lehmann, 2009)
  • Three or more authors: (Waldvogel et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titleProfessional Psychology: Research and Practice
AbbreviationProf. Psychol. Res. Pr.
ISSN (print)0735-7028
ISSN (online)1939-1323
ScopeGeneral Psychology

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