How to format your references using the Psychological Methods citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Psychological Methods. 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

Schwamb, M. E. (2014). Solar System: Stranded in no-man’s-land. Nature, 507(7493), 435–436.

A journal article with 2 authors

Evans, E. A., & Calderwood, D. A. (2007). Forces and bond dynamics in cell adhesion. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5828), 1148–1153.

A journal article with 3 authors

Fabiańska, J., Kassier, G., & Feurer, T. (2014). Split ring resonator based THz-driven electron streak camera featuring femtosecond resolution. Scientific Reports, 4, 5645.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Li, Y., Ji, S., Gao, Y., Luo, H., & Kanehira, M. (2013). Core-shell VO2@TiO2 nanorods that combine thermochromic and photocatalytic properties for application as energy-saving smart coatings. Scientific Reports, 3, 1370.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Allman, K., & Nogales, X. E. D. (2015). Impact Investment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Heywang, W. (2008). Piezoelectricity: Evolution and Future of a Technology (K. Lubitz & W. Wersing, Eds.; Vol. 114). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Yue, X., & Miao, D. (2009). Rough Geometry and Its Applications in Character Recognition. In J. F. Peters, A. Skowron, M. Wolski, M. K. Chakraborty, & W.-Z. Wu (Eds.), Transactions on Rough Sets X (pp. 136–156). 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 Psychological Methods.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, June 8). Google Releases Stunning Underwater Street View For World Oceans Day. 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. (1983). Funding Information on the State Student Incentive Grant Program and Other Need-Based Student Aid Programs (HRD-84-19). 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

Kingston, S. E. (2012). Genome-wide analysis of divergence and introgression in towhee hybrid zones [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Crow, K. (2003, January 19). In the East Village, an Unusual Bid to Fix Up a Firehouse . . . New York Times, 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schwamb, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Evans & Calderwood, 2007; Schwamb, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Evans & Calderwood, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Psychological Methods
Abbreviation	Psychol. Methods
ISSN (print)	1082-989X
ISSN (online)	1939-1463
Scope	Psychology (miscellaneous)