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

Narain, S. (2012). Sanitation for all. Nature, 486(7402), 185.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhao, Z., & Arruda, E. M. (2014). Materials science. An internal cure for damaged polymers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6184), 591–592.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schumacher, M. A., Hurlburt, B. K., & Brennan, R. G. (2001). Crystal structures of SarA, a pleiotropic regulator of virulence genes in S. aureus. Nature, 409(6817), 215–219.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Maeda, T., Hobbs, R. M., Merghoub, T., Guernah, I., Zelent, A., Cordon-Cardo, C., Teruya-Feldstein, J., & Pandolfi, P. P. (2005). Role of the proto-oncogene Pokemon in cellular transformation and ARF repression. Nature, 433(7023), 278–285.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morvillo, N. (2010). Science and Religion. Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Grünig, R. (2006). Process-based Strategic Planning (R. Kühn, Ed.; Fourth Edition). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Klawitter, C. (2008). Making the Most of Your Undergraduate Experience. In R. W. Hartel & C. P. Klawitter (Eds.), Careers in Food Science: From Undergraduate to Professional (pp. 1–6). 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

Davis, J. (2017, January 12). Scientists Think They Have Figured Out How Stress Can Increase Heart Attack Risk. IFLScience; 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. (1971). Acquisition and Use of Software Products for Automatic Data Processing Systems in the Federal Government (B-115369). 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

Ayres, R. (2017). Optimization of a Novel Oxy-Michael Ugi-Smiles Reaction [Doctoral dissertation]. Southern Illinois University.

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

Kelly, M. (1992, December 17). Ideology Seems to Doom Cabinet Contender. New York Times, B20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Narain, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Narain, 2012; Zhao & Arruda, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Zhao & Arruda, 2014)
Three authors: (Schumacher et al., 2001)
6 or more authors: (Maeda et al., 2005)

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