How to format your references using the Children citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Children. 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
1.
Mayr, G. Old World Fossil Record of Modern-Type Hummingbirds. Science 2004, 304, 861–864.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Henderson, G.M.; Slowey, N.C. Evidence from U-Th Dating against Northern Hemisphere Forcing of the Penultimate Deglaciation. Nature 2000, 404, 61–66.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Mang, P.K.; Larochelle, S.; Greven, M. Condensed-Matter Physics: Spurious Magnetism in High-T(c) Superconductor. Nature 2003, 426, 139–140; discussion 140.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Mineur, Y.S.; Abizaid, A.; Rao, Y.; Salas, R.; DiLeone, R.J.; Gündisch, D.; Diano, S.; De Biasi, M.; Horvath, T.L.; Gao, X.-B.; et al. Nicotine Decreases Food Intake through Activation of POMC Neurons. Science 2011, 332, 1330–1332.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Mastro, M. Financial Derivative and Energy Market Valuation; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2013; ISBN 9781118501788.
An edited book
1.
The Administration of Debt Relief by the International Financial Institutions: A Legal Reconstruction of the HIPC Initiative; Guder, L.F., Ed.; Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; Vol. 202; ISBN 9783540886082.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Trajman, O.; Crolotte, A.; Steinhoff, D.; Nambiar, R.O.; Poess, M. Database Are Not Toasters: A Framework for Comparing Data Warehouse Appliances. In Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking: First TPC Technology Conference, TPCTC 2009, Lyon, France, August 24-28, 2009, Revised Selected Papers; Nambiar, R., Poess, M., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp. 31–51 ISBN 9783642104237.

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 Children.

Blog post
1.
Andrew, E. Brain–Brain Interface Allows Humans To Control Cockroaches With Their Minds Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-brain-interface-allows-humans-control-cockroaches-their-minds/ (accessed on 30 October 2018).

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
1.
Government Accountability Office Intercity Passenger Rail: Amtrak Needs to Improve Its Accountability for Taxpayer Relief Act Funds; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2000;

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Garcia-Manglano, J. Working for Pay or Raising a Family? Three Papers on Women’s Work Expectations and Market Outcomes. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park: College Park, MD, 2013.

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
1.
Oestreich, J.R. Grand and Beloved (Sometimes Hated). New York Times 2017, C3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleChildren
AbbreviationChildren (Basel)
ISSN (online)2227-9067
Scope

Other styles