How to format your references using the Developmental Biology citation style

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

Zhang, T., 2015. ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS. More efficient together. Science 350, 738–739.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frieda, K.L., Block, S.M., 2012. Direct observation of cotranscriptional folding in an adenine riboswitch. Science 338, 397–400.

A journal article with 3 authors

Discher, D.E., Mooney, D.J., Zandstra, P.W., 2009. Growth factors, matrices, and forces combine and control stem cells. Science 324, 1673–1677.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Worobey, M., Telfer, P., Souquière, S., Hunter, M., Coleman, C.A., Metzger, M.J., Reed, P., Makuwa, M., Hearn, G., Honarvar, S., Roques, P., Apetrei, C., Kazanji, M., Marx, P.A., 2010. Island biogeography reveals the deep history of SIV. Science 329, 1487.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Orford, J., 2012. Addiction Dilemmas. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Beunen, R., Van Assche, K., Duineveld, M. (Eds.), 2015. Evolutionary Governance Theory: Theory and Applications. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Ncube, M., Gumata, N., Ndou, E., 2016. The Spillovers of Financial Shocks from the United States into the South African Economy, in: Gumata, N., Ndou, E. (Eds.), Global Growth and Financial Spillovers and the South African Macro-Economy. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, pp. 51–66.

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 Developmental Biology.

Blog post

Fang, J., 2015. Why Are Humans So Afraid Of Spiders? [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/our-fear-spiders-innate-not-learned/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2002. District of Columbia: Planned Funding and Schedule for D.C. Public Schools’ Modernization Program Are Unrealistic (No. GAO-02-815R). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Green, R.B., 2013. Bluetooth telemetry system for a wearable electrocardiogram (Doctoral dissertation). Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

Oppel, R.A., Jr., Pérez-Peña, R., 2016. Chicago Releases Videos of Police Shootings. New York Times A9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zhang, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Frieda and Block, 2012; Zhang, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Frieda and Block, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Worobey et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	Dev. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0012-1606
Scope	Cell Biology Developmental Biology Molecular Biology