How to format your references using the Research in Developmental Disabilities citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Research in Developmental Disabilities. 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

Fischer, R. (2008). Developmental biology. Sex and poison in the dark. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5882), 1430–1431.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rotenberg, E., & Yakir, D. (2010). Contribution of semi-arid forests to the climate system. Science (New York, N.Y.), 327(5964), 451–454.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kalab, P., Weis, K., & Heald, R. (2002). Visualization of a Ran-GTP gradient in interphase and mitotic Xenopus egg extracts. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5564), 2452–2456.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Song, J., Chen, X., Wang, M., Xing, Y., Zheng, Z., & Hu, S. (2014). Cardiac endothelial cell-derived exosomes induce specific regulatory B cells. Scientific Reports, 4, 7583.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ledolter, J. (2013). Data Mining and Business Analytics with R. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Damiani, E., Jeong, J., Howlett, R. J., & Jain, L. C. (Eds.). (2009). New Directions in Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services - 2 (Vol. 226). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Martínez-Otzeta, J. M., Ibarguren, A., Ansuategi, A., & Susperregi, L. (2009). Laser Based People Following Behaviour in an Emergency Environment. In M. Xie, Y. Xiong, C. Xiong, H. Liu, & Z. Hu (Eds.), Intelligent Robotics and Applications: Second International Conference, ICIRA 2009, Singapore, December 16-18, 2009. Proceedings (pp. 33–42). 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 Research in Developmental Disabilities.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, July 16). Family Matters: Mental Illness Doesn’t Have To Pass From Parent To Child. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/family-matters-mental-illness-doesn-t-have-pass-parent-child/

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. (1971). Relationship of Contractor and Grantee ADP Activities (092981). 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

Schroeder, S. K. (2017). Tau-Directed Immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s Disease [Doctoral dissertation]. University of South Florida.

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

Billard, M. (2010, May 13). And Here’s How It Got on Your Head. New York Times, E6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fischer, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Fischer, 2008; Rotenberg & Yakir, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Rotenberg & Yakir, 2010)
Three authors: (Kalab et al., 2002)
6 or more authors: (Song et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research in Developmental Disabilities
Abbreviation	Res. Dev. Disabil.
ISSN (print)	0891-4222
Scope	Clinical Psychology Developmental and Educational Psychology