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

Branco, T. (2011). Eppendorf winner. The language of dendrites. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6056), 615–616.

A journal article with 2 authors

Land, M. F., & Osorio, D. (2014). Physiology. Extraordinary color vision. Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6169), 381–382.

A journal article with 3 authors

Parker, J. D., Burkepile, D. E., & Hay, M. E. (2006). Opposing effects of native and exotic herbivores on plant invasions. Science (New York, N.Y.), 311(5766), 1459–1461.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Méndez-Ferrer, S., Lucas, D., Battista, M., & Frenette, P. S. (2008). Haematopoietic stem cell release is regulated by circadian oscillations. Nature, 452(7186), 442–447.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zheng, Y., Xu, X., Xu, Z., Wang, J., & Cai, H. (2017). Metallic Biomaterials. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Becker, M., & Davis, J. (Eds.). (2008). Surgical Management of Inflammatory Eye Disease. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Chafaï, D., & Malrieu, F. (2016). Permutations, partitions, et graphes. In F. Malrieu (Ed.), Recueil de Modèles Aléatoires (pp. 57–68). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Research.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, July 29). Could There Be Earth Fossils On The Moon? IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (1991). Perkins Student Loans: Options That Could Make the Program More Financially Independent (No. HRD-92-6). 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

Scaringe, J. G. (2010). An investigation into the faculty development practices in chiropractic education programs (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kelly, M. (1992, December 13). Newly Selected Chief of Staff Is Widely Known for Loyalty. New York Times, p. 134.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Branco 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Branco 2011; Land and Osorio 2014).

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

Two authors: (Land and Osorio 2014)
Three or more authors: (Méndez-Ferrer et al. 2008)

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