How to format your references using the Early Child Development and Care citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Early Child Development and Care. 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

Smaglik, P. (2002). Small world, big opportunities. Nature, 418(6899), 4–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Morrison, S. J., & Scadden, D. T. (2014). The bone marrow niche for haematopoietic stem cells. Nature, 505(7483), 327–334.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lustig, R. H., Schmidt, L. A., & Brindis, C. D. (2012). Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature, 482(7383), 27–29.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Laursen, N. S., Friesen, R. H. E., Zhu, X., Jongeneelen, M., Blokland, S., Vermond, J., van Eijgen, A., Tang, C., van Diepen, H., Obmolova, G., van der Neut Kolfschoten, M., Zuijdgeest, D., Straetemans, R., Hoffman, R. M. B., Nieusma, T., Pallesen, J., Turner, H. L., Bernard, S. M., Ward, A. B., … Wilson, I. A. (2018). Universal protection against influenza infection by a multidomain antibody to influenza hemagglutinin. Science (New York, N.Y.), 362(6414), 598–602.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Manasreh, O. (2011). Introduction to Nanomaterials and Devices. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Frenking, G. (Ed.). (2005). Theoretical Aspects of Transition Metal Catalysis: -/- (Vol. 12). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hitch, J. D. (2016). Considerations on the Transnationality of International Commercial Arbitration Awards in the Context of the Demand for Legal Certainty. In M. Fenwick & S. Wrbka (Eds.), Legal Certainty in a Contemporary Context: Private and Criminal Law Perspectives (pp. 61–67). 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 Early Child Development and Care.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, April 4). Two New Dwarf Planets Discovered in Outer Solar System. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/two-new-dwarf-planets-discovered-outer-solar-system/

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. (1984). Participation in the National School Lunch Program (RCED-84-132). 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

Shimazoe, J. (2012). The power of forgotten opinions: Why an organization chooses inaction over the public’s safety [Doctoral dissertation]. University of North Carolina.

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

Burghardt, L. F. (2005, October 9). Ready for Their Close-Up, a Couple Consults. New York Times, 14LI12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Morrison & Scadden, 2014; Smaglik, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Morrison & Scadden, 2014)
Three authors: (Lustig et al., 2012)
6 or more authors: (Laursen et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Early Child Development and Care
Abbreviation	Early Child Dev. Care
ISSN (print)	0300-4430
ISSN (online)	1476-8275
Scope	Pediatrics Developmental and Educational Psychology Social Psychology