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

Goldston, D., 2007. Back to school. Nature 446, 714.

A journal article with 2 authors

Plous, S., Herzog, H.A., 2000. Poll shows researchers favor lab animal protection. Science 290, 711b.

A journal article with 3 authors

Frank, M.J., Seeberger, L.C., O’reilly, R.C., 2004. By carrot or by stick: cognitive reinforcement learning in parkinsonism. Science 306, 1940–1943.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Blosser, T.R., Yang, J.G., Stone, M.D., Narlikar, G.J., Zhuang, X., 2009. Dynamics of nucleosome remodelling by individual ACF complexes. Nature 462, 1022–1027.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deschamps, J.-P., Bioul, G.J.A., Sutter, G.D., 2005. Synthesis of Arithmetic Circuits. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Wandrey, C., Cölfen, H. (Eds.), 2006. Analytical Ultracentrifugation VIII, Progress in Colloid and Polymer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Schmidt, W.G., Rauls, E., Gerstmann, U., Sanna, S., Landmann, M., Rohrmüller, M., Riefer, A., Wippermann, S., Blankenburg, S., 2012. Copper Substrate Catalyzes Tetraazaperopyrene Polymerization, in: Nagel, W.E., Kröner, D.B., Resch, M.M. (Eds.), High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ’11: Transactions of the High Performance Computing Center, Stuttgart (HLRS) 2011. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 47–56.

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

Carpineti, C., 2017. Incredible Footage Shows A Baby Being Born Via A “Natural C-Section” [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/incredible-footage-shows-a-baby-being-born-via-a-natural-csection/ (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, 1996. Analysis of “Florida’s Fair Share” (No. HEHS-96-168R). 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

Young, A.J., 2017. An Examination of Cultures of Innovation within Esoteric Technology Provider: A Look into Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Risen, J., Risen, T., 2017. Donald Trump Does His Best Joe McCarthy. New York Times SR2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goldston, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Goldston, 2007; Plous and Herzog, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Plous and Herzog, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Blosser et al., 2009)

About the journal

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