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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Positive 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:

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

Vedral, V. (2008). Quantifying entanglement in macroscopic systems. Nature, 453(7198), 1004–1007.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schneider, R. A., & Helms, J. A. (2003). The cellular and molecular origins of beak morphology. Science (New York, N.Y.), 299(5606), 565–568.

A journal article with 3 authors

Curry, R., Dickson, B., & Yashayaev, I. (2003). A change in the freshwater balance of the Atlantic Ocean over the past four decades. Nature, 426(6968), 826–829.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Schneider, H., Schuettpelz, E., Pryer, K. M., Cranfill, R., Magallón, S., & Lupia, R. (2004). Ferns diversified in the shadow of angiosperms. Nature, 428(6982), 553–557.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Teague, K. A., & Gallicchio, N. (2017). The Evolution of Meteorology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Altrock, U., & Schoon, S. (Eds.). (2014). Maturing Megacities: The Pearl River Delta in Progressive Transformation. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Satchell, S. E., & Hwang, S. (2016). Tracking Error: Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Measures. In S. Satchell (Ed.), Asset Management: Portfolio Construction, Performance and Returns (pp. 54–62). 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 The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, June 15). Jurassic World Reviewed By A Dinosaur Expert: It Isn’t Faithful To Science, But So What? 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. (1988). Use of Information Technology in Hospitals (T-IMTEC-88-4). 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

Denno, D. (2010). Multiple paths to first grade: A comparison of child, parent, and early education variables associated with multiple year kindergarten experiences [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Cincinnati.

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

Brownmiller, S. (2017, September 29). Hugh Hefner Was My Enemy. New York Times, SR3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Vedral, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Schneider & Helms, 2003; Vedral, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Schneider & Helms, 2003)
Three authors: (Curry et al., 2003)
6 or more authors: (Schneider et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of Positive Psychology
Abbreviation	J. Posit. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	1743-9760
ISSN (online)	1743-9779
Scope	General Psychology