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

Abbott, A. (2000). Art imitating high-energy physics. Nature, 404(6775), 219.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ackland, G. J., & Butler, D. (2001). Pack formation in cycling and orienteering. Nature, 413(6852), 127.

A journal article with 3 authors

Griffith, S., Goldwater, D., & Jacobson, J. M. (2005). Robotics: self-replication from random parts. Nature, 437(7059), 636.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Neugebohren, J., Borodin, D., Hahn, H. W., Altschäffel, J., Kandratsenka, A., Auerbach, D. J., Campbell, C. T., Schwarzer, D., Harding, D. J., Wodtke, A. M., & Kitsopoulos, T. N. (2018). Velocity-resolved kinetics of site-specific carbon monoxide oxidation on platinum surfaces. Nature, 558(7709), 280–283.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wang, L., & Tan, K. C. (2005). Modern Industrial Automation Software Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Leeming, D. A. (Ed.). (2014). Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Krugman, S. D., & Lane, W. G. (2014). Fatal Child Abuse. In J. E. Korbin & R. D. Krugman (Eds.), Handbook of Child Maltreatment (pp. 99–112). 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 Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2016, July 28). Amazing Footage Captures Part Of A Chinese Rocket Burning Up Over The US. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (2009). Higher Education: Approaches to Attract and Fund International Students in the United States and Abroad (GAO-09-379). 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

Kane, B. H. (2017). A Qualitative Exploratory Inquiry of Communicating in a Multigenerational Traditional-Rational Organization [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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, October 17). Pain, Protest and Resistance. 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 (Abbott, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Abbott, 2000; Ackland & Butler, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Ackland & Butler, 2001)
Three authors: (Griffith et al., 2005)
6 or more authors: (Neugebohren et al., 2018)

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

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