How to format your references using the African Journal of Psychological Assessment citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for African Journal of Psychological Assessment (AJOPA). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Simmons, N. B. (2005). Evolution. An Eocene big bang for bats. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5709), 527–528.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jean-Baptiste, P., & Fourré, E. (2004). Arctic Ocean: hydrothermal activity on Gakkel Ridge. Nature, 428(6978), 36.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mayor, M., Lovis, C., & Santos, N. C. (2014). Doppler spectroscopy as a path to the detection of Earth-like planets. Nature, 513(7518), 328–335.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Wilman, R. J., Gerssen, J., Bower, R. G., Morris, S. L., Bacon, R., de Zeeuw, P. T., & Davies, R. L. (2005). The discovery of a galaxy-wide superwind from a young massive galaxy at redshift z approximately 3. Nature, 436(7048), 227–229.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bourlès, H. (2013). Linear Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Veves, A., & Malik, R. A. (Eds.). (2007). Diabetic Neuropathy: Clinical Management (Second Edition). Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Neema, M., Dandamudi, V. S. R., Arora, A., Stankiewicz, J., & Bakshi, R. (2007). T1 Black Holes and Gray Matter Damage. In M. Filippi, M. Rovaris, & G. Comi (Eds.), Neurodegeneration in Multiple Sclerosis (pp. 37–45). 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 African Journal of Psychological Assessment.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015, June 25). Bizarre Alien Planet Acts Like A Comet. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/neptune-sized-exoplanet-has-tail-comet/

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. (2011). Information Technology: Continued Attention Needed to Accurately Report Federal Spending and Improve Management (GAO-11-831T). 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

Parajuli, B. (2014). Students’ Motivations towards Volunteerism: A Comparative Study of the United States and Nepal [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Louisiana.

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

Crow, K. (2000, June 19). The Patriarch and the Fighting Sons. New York Times, D1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Simmons, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Jean-Baptiste & Fourré, 2004; Simmons, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Jean-Baptiste & Fourré, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Wilman et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	African Journal of Psychological Assessment
ISSN (online)	2617-2798
Scope