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

Funk, C. D. (2001). Prostaglandins and leukotrienes: advances in eicosanoid biology. Science 294, 1871–1875.

A journal article with 2 authors

Meharg, A. A., and Killham, K. (2003). Environment: A pre-industrial source of dioxins and furans. Nature 421, 909–910.

A journal article with 3 authors

Fabiańska, J., Kassier, G., and Feurer, T. (2014). Split ring resonator based THz-driven electron streak camera featuring femtosecond resolution. Sci. Rep. 4, 5645.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Jiang, Y., Lee, A., Chen, J., Cadene, M., Chait, B. T., and MacKinnon, R. (2002). The open pore conformation of potassium channels. Nature 417, 523–526.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blair, R., and Regenstein, J. M. (2015). Genetic Modification and Food Quality. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Sikora, A., Berbineau, M., Vinel, A., Jonsson, M., Pirovano, A., and Aguado, M. eds. (2014). Communication Technologies for Vehicles: 6th International Workshop, Nets4Cars/Nets4Trains/Nets4Aircraft 2014, Offenburg, Germany, May 6-7, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Oxley, J. C. (2008). “What’s Special About Liquid Explosives?,” in Detection of Liquid Explosives and Flammable Agents in Connection with Terrorism, eds. H. Schubert and A. Kuznetsov (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 27–38.

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. (2014). Scientists Find Biological “Switch” That Reverts Mature Liver Cells to Stem Cells. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-find-biological-“switch”-reverts-mature-liver-cells-stem-cells/ (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 (2006). Gas Pipeline Safety: Preliminary Observations on the Integrity Management Program and 7-Year Reassessment Requirement. 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

Hayes, E. T. (2012). Musical improvisation and the creative process. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Kelly, C. (1999). Focused on Steering A Dinghy to Sydney. New York Times, 812.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Funk, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Funk, 2001; Meharg and Killham, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Meharg and Killham, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Jiang et al., 2002)

About the journal

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