How to format your references using the Cognitive Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cognitive Development. 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	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Dixit, V. (2011). Jürg Tschopp (1951-2011). Nature, 472(7343), 296.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jiang, L.-L., & Perc, M. (2013). Spreading of cooperative behaviour across interdependent groups. Scientific Reports, 3, 2483.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pelechano, V., Wei, W., & Steinmetz, L. M. (2013). Extensive transcriptional heterogeneity revealed by isoform profiling. Nature, 497(7447), 127–131.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Hood, J. D., Bednarski, M., Frausto, R., Guccione, S., Reisfeld, R. A., Xiang, R., & Cheresh, D. A. (2002). Tumor regression by targeted gene delivery to the neovasculature. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5577), 2404–2407.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Moir, I., & Seabridge, A. G. (2006). Military Avionics Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Reif, K. (Ed.). (2014). Brakes, Brake Control and Driver Assistance Systems: Function, Regulation and Components. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

A chapter in an edited book

Yan, J., Lv, T., Guo, L., & Zhang, Z. (2011). Credibility Evaluation of Information Service Platform Based on SOA-Extended. In S. Lin & X. Huang (Eds.), Advanced Research on Computer Education, Simulation and Modeling: International Conference, CESM 2011, Wuhan, China, June 18-19, 2011. Proceedings, Part II (pp. 26–32). 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 Cognitive Development.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, December 30). From Comet Chasing To Gravity Waves: 2014 In Six Science Stories. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/comet-chasing-gravity-waves-2014-six-science-stories/

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. (1990). Connecticut’s Eligibility System: Improving System Availability (IMTEC-90-55). 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

Jones, J. D. (2013). Parental attachment style: Links with parent and adolescent perceptions of parenting and observed secure base behaviors [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Senior, J. (2017, September 6). My Cousin The Soldier And Robber. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dixit, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Dixit, 2011; Jiang & Perc, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Jiang & Perc, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Hood et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Cognitive Development
Abbreviation	Cogn. Dev.
ISSN (print)	0885-2014
Scope	Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology