How to format your references using the Early Childhood Education Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Early Childhood Education Journal. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Sakai, K. L. (2005). Language acquisition and brain development. Science (New York, N.Y.), 310(5749), 815–819.

A journal article with 2 authors

Patterson, G. H., & Lippincott-Schwartz, J. (2002). A photoactivatable GFP for selective photolabeling of proteins and cells. Science (New York, N.Y.), 297(5588), 1873–1877.

A journal article with 3 authors

Richland, L. E., Zur, O., & Holyoak, K. J. (2007). Mathematics. Cognitive supports for analogies in the mathematics classroom. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5828), 1128–1129.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Ma, X., Dai, Y., Yu, L., & Huang, B. (2014). Noble-metal-free plasmonic photocatalyst: hydrogen doped semiconductors. Scientific reports, 4, 3986.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dacey, J. S., Fiore, L. B., & Brion-Meisels, S. (2016). Your Child’s Social and Emotional Well-Being. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Lavacchi, A. (2013). Nanotechnology in Electrocatalysis for Energy. (H. Miller & F. Vizza, Eds.) (Vol. 170). New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Frise, C. J., MacCallum, P. K., Mackillop, L. H., & Nelson-Piercy, C. (2015). Systemic Thromboembolism in Pregnancy: Thromboprophylaxis. In H. Cohen & P. O’Brien (Eds.), Disorders of Thrombosis and Hemostasis in Pregnancy: A Guide to Management (pp. 59–79). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Childhood Education Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, October 30). Plumes Of Enceladus Revealed In Incredible Cassini Flyby Images. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/plumes-enceladus-revealed-incredible-cassini-image-flyby0/. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (1989). Aviation Safety: FAA Action Plan for Chicago O’Hare International Airport (No. RCED-89-114). Washington, DC: 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

Karriem, K. L. (2010). The relationship between stress and emotional intelligence among direct-care workers (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Ryerson, J. (2016, September 23). The Truth Is Out There. New York Times, p. BR31.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sakai 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Patterson and Lippincott-Schwartz 2002; Sakai 2005).

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

Two authors: (Patterson and Lippincott-Schwartz 2002)
Three or more authors: (Ma et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Early Childhood Education Journal
Abbreviation	Early Child. Educ. J.
ISSN (print)	1082-3301
ISSN (online)	1573-1707
Scope	Developmental and Educational Psychology Education