How to format your references using the British Journal of Developmental Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Gill, P. (2001). Atomic clocks. Raising the standards. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5547), 1666–1668.
A journal article with 2 authors
Timmermann, A., & Menviel, L. (2009). Climate change. What drives climate flip-flops? Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5938), 273–274.
A journal article with 3 authors
Elioff, M. S., Valentini, J. J., & Chandler, D. W. (2003). Subkelvin cooling NO molecules via “billiard-like” collisions with argon. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5652), 1940–1943.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Gillett, N. P., Zwiers, F. W., Weaver, A. J., & Stott, P. A. (2003). Detection of human influence on sea-level pressure. Nature, 422(6929), 292–294.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Qu, D. (2016). Manufacturing and Managing Customer-Driven Derivatives. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Anderson, R. (2013). Pro Arduino (D. Cervo, Ed.). Apress.
A chapter in an edited book
Bani-Ahmad, S., & Ozsoyoglu, G. (2007). Improved Publication Scores for Online Digital Libraries Via Research Pyramids. In L. Kovács, N. Fuhr, & C. Meghini (Eds.), Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: 11th European Conference, ECDL 2007, Budapest, Hungary, September 16-21, 2007. Proceedings (pp. 50–62). 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 British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Blog post
O`Callaghan, J. (2017, January 27). It’s 50 Years Today Since Three Astronauts Died In The Apollo 1 Fire. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/its-50-years-today-since-three-astronauts-died-in-the-apollo-1-fire/

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. (1970). Economies Obtainable by Increasing Days at Sea of Oceanographic Research and Survey Ships (B-133188). 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
Scott, E. (2013). Effects of cultural nutritional education among Hispanic women with diabetes [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
St. John Kelly, E. (1993, December 19). PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. New York Times, 1315.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gill, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Gill, 2001; Timmermann & Menviel, 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Timmermann & Menviel, 2009)
  • Three authors: (Elioff et al., 2003)
  • 6 or more authors: (Gillett et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleBritish Journal of Developmental Psychology
AbbreviationBr. J. Dev. Psychol.
ISSN (print)0261-510X
ISSN (online)2044-835X
ScopeDevelopmental Neuroscience
Developmental and Educational Psychology

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