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:

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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Mirabel, I. F. (2006). Astronomy. Very energetic gamma-rays from microquasars and binary pulsars. Science (New York, N.Y.), 312(5781), 1759–1760.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lv, X., & Weng, J. (2013). Ternary composite of hemin, gold nanoparticles and graphene for highly efficient decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Scientific Reports, 3, 3285.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yu, F., Ma, J., & Han, S. (2014). Adsorption of tetracycline from aqueous solutions onto multi-walled carbon nanotubes with different oxygen contents. Scientific Reports, 4, 5326.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Lodowski, D. T., Pitcher, J. A., Capel, W. D., Lefkowitz, R. J., & Tesmer, J. J. G. (2003). Keeping G proteins at bay: a complex between G protein-coupled receptor kinase 2 and Gbetagamma. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5623), 1256–1262.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Southard, T. E., Marshall, S. D., & Bonner, L. L. (2015). Orthodontics in the Vertical Dimension. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Crush, J., & Battersby, J. (Eds.). (2016). Rapid Urbanisation, Urban Food Deserts and Food Security in Africa. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, X., Zhou, J., & Wang, Z. L. (2012). Nanopiezotronics and Nanogenerators. In Z. Zhou, Z. Wang, & L. Lin (Eds.), Microsystems and Nanotechnology (pp. 115–147). 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

Andrew, E. (2013, October 22). Craziest Sex Lives of the Animal Kingdom. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/craziest-sex-lives-animal-kingdom/

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. (1984). Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Oversight of Public Television (AFMD-85-31). 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

Lucas, W. A. (2017). Dynamics of Food Consumption in a Q’eqchi’ Maya Community [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

Billard, M. (2010, June 17). When Artist Becomes Muse. New York Times, E5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mirabel, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Lv & Weng, 2013; Mirabel, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Lv & Weng, 2013)
Three authors: (Yu et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Lodowski et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	British Journal of Developmental Psychology
Abbreviation	Br. J. Dev. Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0261-510X
ISSN (online)	2044-835X
Scope	Developmental Neuroscience Developmental and Educational Psychology

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