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
Klironomos, J. N. (2002). Feedback with soil biota contributes to plant rarity and invasiveness in communities. Nature, 417(6884), 67–70.
A journal article with 2 authors
Mery, F., & Kawecki, T. J. (2005). A cost of long-term memory in Drosophila. Science (New York, N.Y.), 308(5725), 1148.
A journal article with 3 authors
Maiorano, D., Moreau, J., & Méchali, M. (2000). XCDT1 is required for the assembly of pre-replicative complexes in Xenopus laevis. Nature, 404(6778), 622–625.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Hirosumi, J., Tuncman, G., Chang, L., Görgün, C. Z., Uysal, K. T., Maeda, K., Karin, M., & Hotamisligil, G. S. (2002). A central role for JNK in obesity and insulin resistance. Nature, 420(6913), 333–336.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ferrari, M. L., Damo, U. M., Turan, A., & Sánchez, D. (2017). Hybrid Systems Based on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Michard, A., Saddiqi, O., Chalouan, A., & Lamotte, D. F. de (Eds.). (2008). Continental Evolution: The Geology of Morocco: Structure, Stratigraphy, and Tectonics of the Africa-Atlantic-Mediterranean Triple Junction (Vol. 116). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Saraswat, V. (2014). Concurrent Constraint Programming Research Programmes – Redux. In B. O’Sullivan (Ed.), Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming: 20th International Conference, CP 2014, Lyon, France, September 8-12, 2014. Proceedings (pp. 6–8). 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 Review of General Psychology.

Blog post
Andrew, D. (2015, May 30). Top 10 Insane Unexplained Scientific Discoveries. 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. (1996). FCC: Policies and Rules Concerning Children’s Television Programming--Revision of Programming Policies for Television Broadcast Stations (OGC-96-37). 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
Smith, K. L. (2012). Initial construct validation of the color figure mazes test [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine 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
Eligon, J. (2017, June 26). Australia Through American Eyes. New York Times, A6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Klironomos, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Klironomos, 2002; Mery & Kawecki, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Mery & Kawecki, 2005)
  • Three authors: (Maiorano et al., 2000)
  • 6 or more authors: (Hirosumi et al., 2002)

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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