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

Fisk, D. (2012). The Urban Challenge. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6087), 1396–1397.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sprent, J., & Tough, D. F. (2001). T cell death and memory. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5528), 245–248.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rolland-Lagan, A.-G., Bangham, J. A., & Coen, E. (2003). Growth dynamics underlying petal shape and asymmetry. Nature, 422(6928), 161–163.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Jiang, L., Fan, X., Brandt, W. N., Carilli, C. L., Egami, E., Hines, D. C., et al. (2010). Dust-free quasars in the early Universe. Nature, 464(7287), 380–383.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Minoli, D. (2007). IP Multicast with Applications to IPTV and Mobile DVB-H. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Alba, E., Chicano, F., & Luque, G. (Eds.). (2016). Smart Cities: First International Conference, Smart-CT 2016, Málaga, Spain, June 15-17, 2016, Proceedings (Vol. 9704). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Aitken, C., Stephenson, C., & Brinkworth, R. (2010). Process Classification Frameworks. In J. vom Brocke & M. Rosemann (Eds.), Handbook on Business Process Management 2: Strategic Alignment, Governance, People and Culture (pp. 73–92). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Journal of Child and Family Studies.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, November 12). New System Lets Humans Control Mouse Genes With Their Thoughts. 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. (1999). Telecommunications: Overview of the Cramming Problem (No. T-RCED-00-28). 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

Beal, M. E. (2013). Predictive qualities of social characteristics and social integration on altruistic outcomes (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Shpigel, B. (2016, August 27). They’re First-Time Rivals. Their Mothers? Close as Longtime Friends. New York Times, p. D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fisk 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Fisk 2012; Sprent and Tough 2001).

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

Two authors: (Sprent and Tough 2001)
Three or more authors: (Jiang et al. 2010)

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

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