How to format your references using the Early Childhood Research Quarterly citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Early Childhood Research Quarterly. 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

Carbillon, L. (2007). Comment on “Maternal oxytocin triggers a transient inhibitory switch in GABA signaling in the fetal brain during delivery.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5835), 197; author reply 197.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tilman, D., & Clark, M. (2014). Global diets link environmental sustainability and human health. Nature, 515(7528), 518–522.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brun, T., Devetak, I., & Hsieh, M.-H. (2006). Correcting quantum errors with entanglement. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314(5798), 436–439.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Tard, C., Liu, X., Ibrahim, S. K., Bruschi, M., De Gioia, L., Davies, S. C., Yang, X., Wang, L.-S., Sawers, G., & Pickett, C. J. (2005). Synthesis of the H-cluster framework of iron-only hydrogenase. Nature, 433(7026), 610–613.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shafer, D. A. (2005). Hazardous Materials Characterization. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Milkov, N., & Peckhaus, V. (Eds.). (2013). The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism (Vol. 273). Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Feinberg, E. A. (2012). Reduction of Discounted Continuous-Time MDPs with Unbounded Jump and Reward Rates to Discrete-Time Total-Reward MDPs. In D. Hernández-Hernández & J. A. Minjárez-Sosa (Eds.), Optimization, Control, and Applications of Stochastic Systems: In Honor of Onésimo Hernández-Lerma (pp. 77–97). Birkhäuser.

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 Research Quarterly.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, August 29). Junk Food Rats Ditch Balanced Diet To Eat Just Like Obese People. 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. (1976). Assessment of the Impact Aid Program (B-164031(1)). 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

Lucas, M. A. (2017). Bridging the Gap Between Schools and Families Through Teacher Home Visits [Doctoral dissertation]. Lindenwood 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

Wagner, J. (2017, July 9). As Injury Carousel Spins, the Mets Keep Reeling. New York Times, SP4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Carbillon, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Carbillon, 2007; Tilman & Clark, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Tilman & Clark, 2014)
Three authors: (Brun et al., 2006)
6 or more authors: (Tard et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Early Childhood Research Quarterly
Abbreviation	Early Child. Res. Q.
ISSN (print)	0885-2006
Scope	Developmental and Educational Psychology Education Sociology and Political Science