How to format your references using the Mechanisms of Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mechanisms of Development. 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

Seitz, F., 2000. Decline of the generalist. Nature 403, 483.

A journal article with 2 authors

Parsons, J., Wand, Y., 2008. A question of class. Nature 455, 1040–1041.

A journal article with 3 authors

Velikov, V., Borick, S., Angell, C.A., 2001. The glass transition of water, based on hyperquenching experiments. Science 294, 2335–2338.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Mattingley, J.B., Rich, A.N., Yelland, G., Bradshaw, J.L., 2001. Unconscious priming eliminates automatic binding of colour and alphanumeric form in synaesthesia. Nature 410, 580–582.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Price, J., 2010. The Conscious Investor. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Bompiani, E. (Ed.), 2012. Analisi Funzionale, C.I.M.E. Summer Schools. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Grossmann, W., Moser, C., 2016. Big Data—Integration and Cleansing Environment for Business Analytics with DICE, in: Karagiannis, D., Mayr, H.C., Mylopoulos, J. (Eds.), Domain-Specific Conceptual Modeling: Concepts, Methods and Tools. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 103–123.

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 Mechanisms of Development.

Blog post

Andrews, R., 2017. Climate Change Will Give 100,000 Americans Diabetes Every Year [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/climate-change-100000-americans-diabetes-every-year/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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. FTS 2001: Contract Transition Delays and Their Impact on Program Goals (No. GAO-01-544T). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Schick, V.R., 2010. Examining the vulva: The relationship between female genital aesthetic perceptions and gynecological care (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Feeney, K., 2010. Baked Treats of Portugal. New York Times NJ12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Seitz, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Parsons and Wand, 2008; Seitz, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Parsons and Wand, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Mattingley et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Mechanisms of Development
Abbreviation	Mech. Dev.
ISSN (print)	0925-4773
Scope	Developmental Biology Embryology