How to format your references using the International Journal of Play Therapy citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Play Therapy. 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

Aharonian, F. (2007). The very-high-energy gamma-ray sky. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5808), 70–72.

A journal article with 2 authors

Myerson, A. S., & Trout, B. L. (2013). Chemistry. Nucleation from solution. Science (New York, N.Y.), 341(6148), 855–856.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lai, C. S. W., Franke, T. F., & Gan, W.-B. (2012). Opposite effects of fear conditioning and extinction on dendritic spine remodelling. Nature, 483(7387), 87–91.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Maira, S. M., Galetic, I., Brazil, D. P., Kaech, S., Ingley, E., Thelen, M., & Hemmings, B. A. (2001). Carboxyl-terminal modulator protein (CTMP), a negative regulator of PKB/Akt and v-Akt at the plasma membrane. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5541), 374–380.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Elias, H.-G. (2006). Macromolecules. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH.

An edited book

Sgurev, V., Yager, R. R., Kacprzyk, J., & Jotsov, V. (Eds.). (2016). Innovative Issues in Intelligent Systems (1st ed. 2016, Vol. 623). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Hashim, H. (2008). Local Anesthesia and Nerve Blocks. In H. Hashim, P. Abrams, & R. Dmochowski (Eds.), The Handbook of Office Urological Procedures (pp. 32–34). 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 International Journal of Play Therapy.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2017, May 15). Italian Supervolcano Could Be Closer To Erupting Than Previously Thought. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/italian-supervolcano-is-far-closer-to-erupting-than-previously-thought/

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. (2016). Highlights of a Forum: Data and Analytics Innovation: Emerging Opportunities and Challenges (GAO-16-659SP). 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

Slabaugh, J. L. (2012). The Occurrence of Alternans and Arrhythmias in a Multicellular, Cardiac Preparation [Doctoral dissertation]. Ohio State 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

Lipton, E., Barringer, F., & Walsh, M. W. (2012, November 13). Flood Insurance, Already Fragile, Faces New Stress. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Aharonian, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Aharonian, 2007; Myerson & Trout, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Myerson & Trout, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Maira et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Play Therapy
Abbreviation	Int. J. Play Ther.
ISSN (print)	1555-6824
ISSN (online)	1939-0629
Scope	Clinical Psychology Complementary and Manual Therapy