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

Peercy, P. S. (2000). The drive to miniaturization. Nature 406, 1023–1026.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hempstead, B. L., and Salzer, J. L. (2002). Neurobiology. A glial spin on neurotrophins. Science 298, 1184–1186.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li, L. Y., Luo, X., and Wang, X. (2001). Endonuclease G is an apoptotic DNase when released from mitochondria. Nature 412, 95–99.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Booth, J. A., Thomassen, G. O. S., Rowe, A. D., Weel-Sneve, R., Lagesen, K., Kristiansen, K. I., et al. (2013). Tiling array study of MNNG treated Escherichia coli reveals a widespread transcriptional response. Sci. Rep. 3, 3053.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baudin, P. (2014). Wireless Transceiver Architecture. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Moreno, A. (2015). Biological Autonomy: A Philosophical and Theoretical Enquiry. , ed. M. Mossio Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Shonnard, D., Lindner, A., Nguyen, N., Ramachandran, P. A., Fichana, D., Hesketh, R., et al. (2012). “Green Engineering: Integration of Green Chemistry, Pollution Prevention, and Risk-Based Considerations,” in Handbook of Industrial Chemistry and Biotechnology, ed. J. A. Kent (Boston, MA: Springer US), 155–199.

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

Andrews, R. (2016). The United Arab Emirates Want To Build An Artificial Mountain. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/united-arab-emirates-may-be-building-artificialmountain/ [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 (2001). Pipeline Safety: Progress Made, but Significant Requirements and Recommendations Not Yet Complete. 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

Wager, L. (2009). Racial differences in the relationship between child externalizing and corporal punishment: The role of other discipline strategies.

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, K., and Eder, S. (2017). Trump Adviser Tied to Goldman to Sell Chinese Bank Stake. New York Times, B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Peercy, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Peercy, 2000; Hempstead and Salzer, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Hempstead and Salzer, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Booth et al., 2013)

About the journal

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

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