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

Schlamminger, S. (2014). Fundamental constants: a cool way to measure big G. Nature, 510(7506), 478–480.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yuan, J., & Poulin, P. (2014). Materials science. Fibers do the twist. Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6173), 845–846.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bryden, H. L., Longworth, H. R., & Cunningham, S. A. (2005). Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25 degrees N. Nature, 438(7068), 655–657.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Li, L., Checkelsky, J. G., Hor, Y. S., Uher, C., Hebard, A. F., Cava, R. J., & Ong, N. P. (2008). Phase transitions of Dirac electrons in bismuth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5888), 547–550.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Andresen, R., Oades, L. G., & Caputi, P. (2011). Psychological Recovery. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Ettinger, D. S. (Ed.). (2009). Supportive Care in Cancer Therapy. Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Caldarini, C., Catalano, P., Piccioli, A., Spinelli, M. S., & Zavaroni, F. (2015). Oncologic Pathologies. In V. Gazzaniga & P. Catalano (Eds.), Bones: Orthopaedic Pathologies in Roman Imperial Age (pp. 103–127). Springer International Publishing.

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

Carpineti, A. (2015, November 12). NASA Unveils New Mars Spacesuits. 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. (2014). K-12 Education: Characteristics of the Investing in Innovation Fund (GAO-14-211R). 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

Hardin, J. (2010). A study of social cognitive theory: The relationship between professional learning communities and collective teacher efficacy in international school settings [Doctoral dissertation]. Capella University.

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

Fitzgerald, A. (2017, August 2). Worlds in a Cell. New York Times, BR13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schlamminger, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Schlamminger, 2014; Yuan & Poulin, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Yuan & Poulin, 2014)
Three authors: (Bryden et al., 2005)
6 or more authors: (Li et al., 2008)

About the journal

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

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