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
Russo, E. (2003). The birth of biotechnology. Nature, 421(6921), 456–457.
A journal article with 2 authors
Wood, W. B., & Gentile, J. M. (2003). Education. Teaching in a research context. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5650), 1510.
A journal article with 3 authors
Heinsohn, R., Legge, S., & Endler, J. A. (2005). Extreme reversed sexual dichromatism in a bird without sex role reversal. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5734), 617–619.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Sánchez-Lavega, A., Pérez-Hoyos, S., Rojas, J. F., Hueso, R., & French, R. G. (2003). A strong decrease in Saturn’s equatorial jet at cloud level. Nature, 423(6940), 623–625.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Quinn, J. F. (2013). Dementia. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
An edited book
Xiao, J. J. (Ed.). (2008). Handbook of Consumer Finance Research. Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Nordström, G., Johnsson, H., & Lidelöw, S. (2013). Using the Energy Signature Method to Estimate the Effective U-Value of Buildings. In A. Hakansson, M. Höjer, R. J. Howlett, & L. C. Jain (Eds.), Sustainability in Energy and Buildings: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference in Sustainability in Energy and Buildings (SEB´12) (pp. 35–44). 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 Advances in Life Course Research.

Blog post
Andrews, R. (2017, March 21). What In The Name Of Thor Are These Icelandic Zig-Zags? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-name-thor-zigzags-iceland/

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. (2012). The Department of Energy’s Office of Science Uses a Multilayered Process for Prioritizing Research (GAO-12-410R). 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
Adams, A. A. (2009). A study of the attitudes and opinions of southwest Missouri educators regarding the value and outcome of the performance based teacher evaluation process [Doctoral dissertation]. Lindenwood 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
Hollander, S. (2000, August 30). First, There Was Parrying With Mother. New York Times, D5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Russo, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Russo, 2003; Wood & Gentile, 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Wood & Gentile, 2003)
  • Three authors: (Heinsohn et al., 2005)
  • 6 or more authors: (Sánchez-Lavega et al., 2003)

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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