How to format your references using the Psychological Research citation style

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

Shen, H. (2014). Interactive notebooks: Sharing the code. Nature, 515(7525), 151–152.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zimmerman, J. B., & Anastas, P. T. (2015). Chemistry. Toward substitution with no regrets. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6227), 1198–1199.

A journal article with 3 authors

Parker, H. J., Bronner, M. E., & Krumlauf, R. (2014). A Hox regulatory network of hindbrain segmentation is conserved to the base of vertebrates. Nature, 514(7523), 490–493.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Lenggenhager, B., Tadi, T., Metzinger, T., & Blanke, O. (2007). Video ergo sum: manipulating bodily self-consciousness. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5841), 1096–1099.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Conklin, A. R., Jr. (2005). Introduction to Soil Chemistry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lyden, P. D. (Ed.). (2015). Thrombolytic Therapy for Acute Stroke (3rd ed. 2015.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Lin, W., & Wong, C. P. (2010). Applications of Carbon Nanomaterials as Electrical Interconnects and Thermal Interface Materials. In C. P. Wong, K.-S. Moon, & Y. (grace) Li (Eds.), Nano-Bio- Electronic, Photonic and MEMS Packaging (pp. 87–138). Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 Research.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2016, June 7). Bizarre Horned Ant Preserved In 99-Million-Year-Old Amber. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/bizarre-horned-ant-preserved-in-ninety-nine-million-year-old-amber/. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (2016). Cloud Computing: Agencies Need to Incorporate Key Practices to Ensure Effective Performance (No. GAO-16-325). Washington, DC: 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

Song, X. (2015). A New Estimating Equation Based Approach for Secondary Trait Analyses in Genetic Case-control Studies (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University, New York, NY.

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

Chavez, L. (2005, November 17). Fellow Republicans, Open Your Doors. New York Times, p. A31.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Shen 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Shen 2014; Zimmerman and Anastas 2015).

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

Two authors: (Zimmerman and Anastas 2015)
Three or more authors: (Lenggenhager et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Psychological Research
Abbreviation	Psychol. Res.
ISSN (print)	0340-0727
ISSN (online)	1430-2772
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) General Medicine Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology