How to format your references using the Frontiers in Developmental Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Developmental Psychology. 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

Farese, P. (2012). Technology: How to build a low-energy future. Nature 488, 275–277.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nussenzweig, M. C., and Mellman, I. (2011). Ralph Steinman (1943-2011). Nature 478, 460.

A journal article with 3 authors

Murtagh, G. J., Dyer, P. S., and Crittenden, P. D. (2000). Sex and the single lichen. Nature 404, 564.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Brixner, T., Damrauer, N. H., Niklaus, P., and Gerber, G. (2001). Photoselective adaptive femtosecond quantum control in the liquid phase. Nature 414, 57–60.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (2013). MAK- und BAT-Werte-Liste 2013. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

O‘Connor, R. V., Pries-Heje, J., and Messnarz, R. eds. (2011). Systems, Software and Service Process Improvement: 18th European Conference, EuroSPI 2011, Roskilde, Denmark, June 27-29, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Aboulaich, A., Robert, F., Lippens, P. E., Aldon, L., Olivier-Fourcade, J., Willmann, P., et al. (2007). “In situ 119Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy study of Sn-based electrode materials,” in ICAME 2005: Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (ICAME 2005) held in Montpellier, France, 4–9 September 2005 Volume II (Part III–V/V), eds. P.-E. Lippens, J.-C. Jumas, and J.-M. R. Génin (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 733–738.

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 Frontiers in Developmental Psychology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Why Do My Muscles Ache The Day After Exercise? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-do-my-muscles-ache-day-after-exercise/ [Accessed October 30, 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 (1999). Critical Infrastructure Protection: Comprehensive Strategy Can Draw on Year 2000 Experiences. 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

Savvas, C. (2010). Hydroclimate variability and landuse effects on nutrient export from watersheds in the mid-Atlantic United States.

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

Billard, M. (2010). Home Is a Place to Hang His Hats. New York Times, E5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Farese, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Nussenzweig and Mellman, 2011; Farese, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Nussenzweig and Mellman, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Brixner et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Developmental Psychology
Abbreviation	Front. Psychol.
ISSN (online)	1664-1078
Scope	General Psychology