How to format your references using the Swiss Journal of Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Swiss Journal of 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Rothemund, P. W. K. (2006). Folding DNA to create nanoscale shapes and patterns. Nature, 440(7082), 297–302.
A journal article with 2 authors
Wicherts, J. M., & Scholten, A. Z. (2013). Comment on “Poverty impedes cognitive function.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 342(6163), 1169.
A journal article with 3 authors
Mulch, A., Graham, S. A., & Chamberlain, C. P. (2006). Hydrogen isotopes in Eocene river gravels and paleoelevation of the Sierra Nevada. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5783), 87–89.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zhitenev, N. B., Fulton, T. A., Yacoby, A., Hess, H. F., Pfeiffer, L. N., & West, K. W. (2000). Imaging of localized electronic states in the quantum Hall regime. Nature, 404(6777), 473–476.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Möller, R., Pöter, H., & Schwarze, K. (2011). Planen und Bauen mit Trapezprofilen und Sandwichelementen. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Huebner, W. F. (2014). Opacity (W. D. Barfield, Ed.; Vol. 402). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Bergevin, R., & Bergeron, V. (2008). Enhancing Boundary Primitives Using a Multiscale Quadtree Segmentation. In G. Bebis, R. Boyle, B. Parvin, D. Koracin, P. Remagnino, F. Porikli, J. Peters, J. Klosowski, L. Arns, Y. K. Chun, T.-M. Rhyne, & L. Monroe (Eds.), Advances in Visual Computing: 4th International Symposium, ISVC 2008, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 1-3, 2008. Proceedings, Part I (pp. 45–54). 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 Swiss Journal of Psychology.

Blog post
Andrews, R. (2016, September 26). Researcher Uses CRISPR To Edit DNA Of Healthy Human Embryos In Controversial World First. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/researcher-crispr-edit-dna-healthy-human-embryos-controversial-world-first/

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. (1995). Land-Grant College Revenues (HEHS-96-10R). 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
Parsons, A. T. (2010). Metal-catalyzed annulations of strained cycloalkanes [Doctoral dissertation]. University of North Carolina.

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
Gurley, G. (2014, March 27). A Wealth of Ideas. New York Times, E1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rothemund, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Rothemund, 2006; Wicherts & Scholten, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Wicherts & Scholten, 2013)
  • Three authors: (Mulch et al., 2006)
  • 6 or more authors: (Zhitenev et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titleSwiss Journal of Psychology
AbbreviationSwiss J. Psychol.
ISSN (print)1421-0185
ISSN (online)1662-0879
ScopeGeneral Psychology

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