How to format your references using the Journal of Child and Family Studies citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Child and Family Studies. 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

Edgerton, D. (2011). In praise of Luddism. Nature, 471(7336), 27–29.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mulligan, S. J., & MacVicar, B. A. (2004). Calcium transients in astrocyte endfeet cause cerebrovascular constrictions. Nature, 431(7005), 195–199.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen, Q., Bae, S. C., & Granick, S. (2011). Directed self-assembly of a colloidal kagome lattice. Nature, 469(7330), 381–384.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Chamoun, Z., Mann, R. K., Nellen, D., von Kessler, D. P., Bellotto, M., Beachy, P. A., & Basler, K. (2001). Skinny hedgehog, an acyltransferase required for palmitoylation and activity of the hedgehog signal. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5537), 2080–2084.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Murdoch, I., Turpin, S., Johnston, B., MacLullich, A., & Losman, E. (2014). Geriatric Emergencies. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Santiago-Fandiño, V., Kontar, Y. A., & Kaneda, Y. (Eds.). (2015). Post-Tsunami Hazard: Reconstruction and Restoration (Vol. 44). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Schnitman, D. F. (2008). Generative Inquiry in Therapy: From Problems to Creativity. In T. Sugiman, K. J. Gergen, W. Wagner, & Y. Yamada (Eds.), Meaning in Action: Constructions, Narratives, and Representations (pp. 73–95). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

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 Journal of Child and Family Studies.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2011, January 1). South Sudan Is Having An Outbreak of Unexplained Hemorrhagic Fever. IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed 30 October 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. (1992). Aviation Safety: Slow Progress, Uncertain Future Threaten FAA Program To Measure Safety (No. T-IMTEC-92-12). 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

Wilson, W. C. (2015). Life satisfaction of Air Force civilian male spouses (Doctoral dissertation). Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.

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

Mann, J. (2016, December 17). A Foreign Policy Team of Rivals. New York Times, p. SR11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Edgerton 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Edgerton 2011; Mulligan and MacVicar 2004).

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

Two authors: (Mulligan and MacVicar 2004)
Three or more authors: (Chamoun et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Child and Family Studies
Abbreviation	J. Child Fam. Stud.
ISSN (print)	1062-1024
ISSN (online)	1573-2843
Scope	Developmental and Educational Psychology Life-span and Life-course Studies