How to format your references using the Early Years citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Early Years. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Hanson, Brooks. 2005. “Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake. Learning from Natural Disasters. Introduction.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 308 (5725): 1125.
A journal article with 2 authors
Mongiat, Lucas A., and Alejandro F. Schinder. 2014. “Neuroscience. A Price to Pay for Adult Neurogenesis.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 344 (6184): 594–595.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kohli, Rahul M., Christopher T. Walsh, and Michael D. Burkart. 2002. “Biomimetic Synthesis and Optimization of Cyclic Peptide Antibiotics.” Nature 418 (6898): 658–661.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Massé, Karine, Surinder Bhamra, Robert Eason, Nicholas Dale, and Elizabeth A. Jones. 2007. “Purine-Mediated Signalling Triggers Eye Development.” Nature 449 (7165): 1058–1062.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Smith, Eric M. 2006. Advances in Thermal Design of Heat Exchangers. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Engel, Florian, and Billy Sperlich, eds. 2016. Compression Garments in Sports: Athletic Performance and Recovery. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Jiang, Chuntao, and Frans Coenen. 2009. “Graph-Based Image Classification by Weighting Scheme.” In Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XVI: Proceedings of AI-2008, the Twenty-Eighth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Tony Allen, Richard Ellis, and Miltos Petridis, 63–76. London: 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 Years.

Blog post
Andrew, Elise. 2015. “What the Dog-Fish and Camel-Bird Can Tell Us about How Our Brains Work.” 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. 2004. Information Technology: DOD’s Acquisition Policies and Guidance Need to Incorporate Additional Best Practices and Controls. GAO-04-722. 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
Melhorn, Susan J. 2009. “The Microstructure of Food Intake under Conditions of High-Fat Diet, Social Stress and Social Subordination.” Doctoral dissertation, Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati.

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
Greenhouse, Linda. 2006. “Court Upholds Arizona Limits Imposed on Insanity Defense.” New York Times, June 30.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hanson 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Hanson 2005; Mongiat and Schinder 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Mongiat and Schinder 2014)
  • Three authors: (Kohli, Walsh, and Burkart 2002)
  • 4 or more authors: (Massé et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal titleEarly Years
AbbreviationEarly Years (Stoke-on-Trent)
ISSN (print)0957-5146
ISSN (online)1472-4421
ScopeDevelopmental and Educational Psychology
Education

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