How to format your references using the Review of General Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Review of General Psychology. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Gershon, D. (2005). Thinking big Texas. Nature, 434(7037), 1160–1161.
A journal article with 2 authors
Excoffier, L., & Hamilton, G. (2003). Comment on “Genetic structure of human populations.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5627), 1877; author reply 1877.
A journal article with 3 authors
Hulleman, F., van Kerkwijk, M. H., & Kulkarni, S. R. (2000). An optical counterpart to the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U0142+61. Nature, 408(6813), 689–692.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Mok, K. H., Kuhn, L. T., Goez, M., Day, I. J., Lin, J. C., Andersen, N. H., & Hore, P. J. (2007). A pre-existing hydrophobic collapse in the unfolded state of an ultrafast folding protein. Nature, 447(7140), 106–109.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Boutillier, S., Carré, D., & Levratto, N. (2016). Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Rivera, F. I. (2015). Disaster Vulnerability, Hazards and Resilience: Perspectives from Florida (N. Kapucu, Ed.). Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Hammad, E. A. (2016). Palestinian University Students’ Problems with EFL Essay Writing in an Instructional Setting. In A. Ahmed & H. Abouabdelkader (Eds.), Teaching EFL Writing in the 21st Century Arab World: Realities and Challenges (pp. 99–124). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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 Review of General Psychology.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2015, February 11). Armstrong’s Moon Mementos Found In Closet. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/armstrongs-moon-mementos-found-closet/

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. (2000). Telecommunications: Development of Competition in Local Telephone Markets (RCED-00-38). 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
Weissflug, K. G. (2009). Effects of Positive Behavior Support Programs on Student Behaviors [Doctoral dissertation]. Lindenwood 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
Kelly, S. (2000, February 20). Books in Brief: Fiction. New York Times, 721.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gershon, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Excoffier & Hamilton, 2003; Gershon, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Excoffier & Hamilton, 2003)
  • Three authors: (Hulleman et al., 2000)
  • 6 or more authors: (Mok et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal titleReview of General Psychology
AbbreviationRev. Gen. Psychol.
ISSN (print)1089-2680
ISSN (online)1939-1552
ScopeGeneral Psychology

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