How to format your references using the Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for 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 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

Git, A. (2012). Research tools: A recipe for disaster. Nature 484, 439–440.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mathieu, R. D. and Geller, A. M. (2009). A binary star fraction of 76 per cent and unusual orbit parameters for the blue stragglers of NGC 188. Nature 462, 1032–1035.

A journal article with 3 authors

Maurer, S. M., Hugenholtz, P. B. and Onsrud, H. J. (2001). Intellectual property. Europe’s database experiment. Science 294, 789–790.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Bermudez, V., V., Capron, N., Gase, T., Gatti, F. G., Kajzar, F., Leigh, D. A., Zerbetto, F. and Zhang, S. (2000). Influencing intramolecular motion with an alternating electric field. Nature 406, 608–611.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Uribe, S. (2017). Frontier Road. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Landers, R. N. and Schmidt, G. B. eds. (2016). Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment: Theory, Practice, and Current Challenges. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Ye, L. and Hou, J. (2015). Conjugated Polymer Photovoltaic Materials. In Organic Optoelectronic Materials (ed. Li, Y.), pp. 195–239. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Development.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). How To Get Into The World’s Top University: Oxford Reveals Its Interview Questions. IFLScience.

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 (2017). Internet of Things: Communities Deploy Projects by Combining Federal Support with Other Funds and Expertise. Washington, DC: 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

Jozwiak, A. L. (2012). Social work internship stipend program: A grant proposal.

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

Brantley, B. (2017). High Society Soaked in Bathtub Gin. New York Times C5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Git, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Git, 2012; Mathieu and Geller, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Mathieu and Geller, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Bermudez et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Development
Abbreviation	Development
ISSN (print)	0950-1991
ISSN (online)	1477-9129
Scope	Developmental Biology Molecular Biology