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

Greenberg, D. L. (2007). Comment on “Detecting awareness in the vegetative state.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5816), 1221; author reply 1221.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hong, S., & Asai, T. (2014). Effect of panel shape of soccer ball on its flight characteristics. Scientific Reports, 4, 5068.

A journal article with 3 authors

Blair, A. C., Fisher, E. R., & Rickey, D. (2012). IBI* series winner. Discovering nanoscience. Science (New York, N.Y.), 337(6098), 1056–1057.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Schmidt, J., Brilliantov, N., Spahn, F., & Kempf, S. (2008). Slow dust in Enceladus’ plume from condensation and wall collisions in tiger stripe fractures. Nature, 451(7179), 685–688.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zonnenshain, A., & Stauber, S. (2015). Managing and Engineering Complex Technological Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Giacomo, D. F. (Ed.). (2011). The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: From Declaration to Binding Instrument (Vol. 8). Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Yamaguchi, H., Lee, J. R., Goldenring, J. R., & Kaminishi, M. (2005). Fundic Mucosal Change Associated with Oxyntic Atrophy. In M. Kaminishi, K. Takubo, & K.-I. Mafune (Eds.), The Diversity of Gastric Carcinoma: Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Therapy (pp. 87–96). 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. (2015, April 6). Iconic Boab Trees Trace Journeys Of Ancient Aboriginal People. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/iconic-boab-trees-trace-journeys-ancient-aboriginal-people/

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. (1975). Energy Research and Development Administration’s Contingency Plan for Constructing Additional Enrichment Capacity at Portsmouth, Ohio (RED-76-55). 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

Rogers, R. C. (2010). Documenting cultural transition through contact archaeology in Tíhoo, Mérida, Yucatán [Doctoral dissertation]. Florida Atlantic 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

Novick, S. M. (2015, June 28). Farm to Blanket. New York Times, LI8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Greenberg, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Greenberg, 2007; Hong & Asai, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Hong & Asai, 2014)
Three authors: (Blair et al., 2012)
6 or more authors: (Schmidt et al., 2008)

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

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