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

Lawler, A., 2011. Archaeology. Preserving history, one hill at a time. Science 334, 1623.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nordborg, M., Weigel, D., 2008. Next-generation genetics in plants. Nature 456, 720–723.

A journal article with 3 authors

Padian, K., de Ricqlès, A.J., Horner, J.R., 2001. Dinosaurian growth rates and bird origins. Nature 412, 405–408.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kaitsuka, T., Katagiri, C., Beesetty, P., Nakamura, K., Hourani, S., Tomizawa, K., Kozak, J.A., Matsushita, M., 2014. Inactivation of TRPM7 kinase activity does not impair its channel function in mice. Sci. Rep. 4, 5718.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Matloff, R., Chaillou, J.H., 2013. Nonprofit Investment and Development Solutions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Calude, C.S., Freivalds, R., Kazuo, I. (Eds.), 2014. Computing with New Resources: Essays Dedicated to Jozef Gruska on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Di Noia, T., Ostuni, V.C., 2015. Recommender Systems and Linked Open Data, in: Faber, W., Paschke, A. (Eds.), Reasoning Web. Web Logic Rules: 11th International Summer School 2015, Berlin, Germany, July 31- August 4, 2015, Tutorial Lectures, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 88–113.

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

Andrew, E., 2014. Watch chemicals turn into memories - the first time this has ever been recorded [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/watch-chemicals-turn-memories-first-time-has-ever-been-recorded/ (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, 1988. FAA Appropriation Issues (No. T-RCED-88-32). 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

Wu, D.-M.C., 2010. Function and regulation of Drosophila myc during wing growth (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University, New York, NY.

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

Steel, E., Grynbaum, M.M., 2017. Top Fox News Lawyer, Key Figure in Sexual Harassment Cases, Goes on Leave. New York Times B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lawler, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Lawler, 2011; Nordborg and Weigel, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Nordborg and Weigel, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Kaitsuka et al., 2014)

About the journal

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