How to format your references using the Psychology, Public Policy, and Law citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. 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

Assad, J. A. (2014). Neuroscience: Updating views of visual updating. Nature, 507(7493), 434–435.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fox, K., & Caterson, B. (2002). Neuroscience. Freeing the bain from the perineuronal net. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5596), 1187–1189.

A journal article with 3 authors

Prakash, M., Quéré, D., & Bush, J. W. M. (2008). Surface tension transport of prey by feeding shorebirds: the capillary ratchet. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5878), 931–934.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Ortega-Martínez, O., Pernas, M., Carol, R. J., & Dolan, L. (2007). Ethylene modulates stem cell division in the Arabidopsis thaliana root. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5837), 507–510.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kay, R. (2014). Statistical Thinking for Non-Statisticians in Drug Regulation. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Altman, B. M. (Ed.). (2016). International Measurement of Disability: Purpose, Method and Application (Vol. 61). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Küpper, H., Küpper, F. C., & Spiller, M. (2006). [Heavy metal]-Chlorophylls Formed in Vivo During Heavy Metal Stress and Degradation Products Formed During Digestion, Extraction and Storage of Plant Material. In B. Grimm, R. J. Porra, W. Rüdiger, & H. Scheer (Eds.), Chlorophylls and Bacteriochlorophylls: Biochemistry, Biophysics, Functions and Applications (pp. 67–77). 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 Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, August 11). Doctors Find A Tooth Inside A Man’s Nose. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/doctors-find-tooth-inside-mans-nose/

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. (1994). Amtrak: Key Decisions Need to Be Made in the Face of Deteriorating Financial Condition (T-RCED-94-186). 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

Sandoval, V. (2013). Preventing chronic truancy among Latino high school students: A grant proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Zajac, M. K. (2012, December 30). Cara Shepley and Genshi Ezawa. New York Times, ST9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Assad, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Assad, 2014; Fox & Caterson, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Fox & Caterson, 2002)
Three authors: (Prakash et al., 2008)
6 or more authors: (Ortega-Martínez et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
Abbreviation	Psychol. Public Policy Law
ISSN (print)	1076-8971
ISSN (online)	1939-1528
Scope	Social Psychology Law Sociology and Political Science