How to format your references using the Advances in Life Course Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Advances in Life Course Research. 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
Lawler, A. (2011). Archaeology. Preserving history, one hill at a time. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6063), 1623.
A journal article with 2 authors
Accardi, A., & Miller, C. (2004). Secondary active transport mediated by a prokaryotic homologue of ClC Cl- channels. Nature, 427(6977), 803–807.
A journal article with 3 authors
McNally, A., Prier, C. K., & MacMillan, D. W. C. (2011). Discovery of an α-amino C-H arylation reaction using the strategy of accelerated serendipity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6059), 1114–1117.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Adams, W. M., Aveling, R., Brockington, D., Dickson, B., Elliott, J., Hutton, J., Roe, D., Vira, B., & Wolmer, W. (2004). Biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5699), 1146–1149.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Modarres, M., Amiri, M., & Jackson, C. (2017). Probabilistic Physics of Failure Approach to Reliability. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Felser, C., & Fecher, G. H. (Eds.). (2013). Spintronics: From Materials to Devices. Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Montagnini, F. (2006). Homegardens of Mesoamerica: Biodiversity, food security, and nutrient management. In B. M. Kumar & P. K. R. Nair (Eds.), Tropical Homegardens: A Time-Tested Example of Sustainable Agroforestry (pp. 61–84). Springer Netherlands.

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 Advances in Life Course Research.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, August 17). New Rules Say Unvaccinated Australian Kids Can’t Attend Kindergarten. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/no-childcare-or-kindergarten-unvaccinated-australian-kids/

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). Information Technology Reform: Agencies Need to Increase Their Use of Incremental Development Practices (GAO-16-469). 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
Tan, S. W. (2013). A pedagogical approach to selected études from Étude en douze exercices, S.136 and Études d ’exécution transcendante, S.139 by Franz Liszt [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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
Vlasic, B. (2015, February 4). Despite Recalls, G.M. Pays Workers Big Bonus. 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 (Lawler, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Accardi & Miller, 2004; Lawler, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Accardi & Miller, 2004)
  • Three authors: (McNally et al., 2011)
  • 6 or more authors: (Adams et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleAdvances in Life Course Research
AbbreviationAdv. Life Course Res.
ISSN (print)1040-2608
ScopeLife-span and Life-course Studies

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