Referencing Styles

A guide to the reference styles used at the University of St Andrews

What you need to include:

Print journal article references include:

  • Author(s) of article

  • (Year of publication)

  • 'Title of article'

  • Title of Journal

  • Volume number

  • (Issue number)

  • Page numbers

 

Online journal article references include:

  • Author(s) of the article

  • (Year of Publication)

  • 'Title of article'

  • Title of Journal

  • Volume number

  • (Issue number)

  • Page numbers OR

  • doi

 

Generally articles from online journals are referenced in the same way as print journals, unless it's an online only publication, or there are no page numbers in the article, in which case a doi (Digital Object Identifier) can be given, when available.

Fields marked in blue are only included where the source contains that information.

The basic in-text citation format is:

(Author surname, Year)

The Basic Reference List format is:

Author, A.A. (Year) 'Article title', Journal title, volume number (issue number), pp-pp.

 

In-text citation:

(Black and Barnes, 2015)

Reference list entry:

Black, J. and Barnes, J.L.  (2015)  'Fiction and social cognition: The effect of viewing award-winning television dramas on the theory of mind', Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 9 (4), pp. 423-429.

Example journal cover page Example journal article first page

 

In-text citation:

(Kemp, et al., 2014)

Reference list entry:

Kemp, E., et al. (2014) 'Attentional retraining can reduce chocolate consumption', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20 (1), pp. 94-102. doi: 10.1037/xap0000005.

Example journal article first page

Ensure you include all the punctuation required in your reference.

  • In-text citations are within parenthesis, and contain the author(s) surname(s) and year of publication, page number is given if you are referring to a specific page/section;  if you refer to the authors within your text only the date is needed in your in-text citation, if you refer to the year in your text, only the author(s) is required in your in-text citation.
  • For multiple authors follow the advice in the Author Rules tab, paying attention to the use of commas, use "and" rather than "&".
  • (Date) is always within parenthesis
  • Journal article references include the title of the article, and title of the journal the article is published in
  • Article titles are in given within single quotation marks, and are not italicised
  • Journal publication title is always italicised
  • Journal title is followed by the volume number
  • Where given include the issue number in parenthesis after the volume number.
  • Page numbers should be given where available as pp. xv-xx.
  • For online journals with a doi, give the doi after the page numbers as doi: xxxxxxxxxx.
  • For online journal articles with a URL give the full URL for the article.