How to format your references using the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Experimental Child 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Ma, Z. (2011). Materials science. An electronic second skin. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6044), 830–831.
A journal article with 2 authors
Gelb, M. H., & Hol, W. G. J. (2002). Parasitology. Drugs to combat tropical protozoan parasites. Science (New York, N.Y.), 297(5580), 343–344.
A journal article with 3 authors
He, C., Jiang, S. P., & Shen, P. K. (2013). Large-scale and rapid synthesis of disk-shaped and nano-sized graphene. Scientific Reports, 3, 2144.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Martinez, P., McGranahan, N., Birkbak, N. J., Gerlinger, M., & Swanton, C. (2013). Computational optimisation of targeted DNA sequencing for cancer detection. Scientific Reports, 3, 3309.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Anderson, D. (2007). TKO Hiring! John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Chu, J. (2008). Physics and Properties of Narrow Gap Semiconductors (A. Sher, Ed.). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Acebes, C., & Harvie, J. P. (2015). Psoriatic Arthritis. In Y. El Miedany (Ed.), Musculoskeletal Ultrasonography in Rheumatic Diseases (pp. 107–122). Springer International Publishing.

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 Experimental Child Psychology.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2015, April 24). How To Sex A Dinosaur. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-sex-dinosaur/

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. (1979). Supplemental Security Income Computerized System Development Process (HRD-80-5). 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
Cervantes, I. (2013). Flexural retrofitting of reinforced concrete structures using Green Natural Fiber Reinforced Polymer plates [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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
Williams, J. (2017, February 24). Stranger Than Reality? New York Times, BR4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ma, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Gelb & Hol, 2002; Ma, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Gelb & Hol, 2002)
  • Three authors: (He et al., 2013)
  • 6 or more authors: (Martinez et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Experimental Child Psychology
AbbreviationJ. Exp. Child Psychol.
ISSN (print)0022-0965
ScopeDevelopmental and Educational Psychology
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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