How to format your references using the The International Journal of Developmental Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The International Journal of Developmental Biology (IJDB). 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

TESMER JJG (2006). Pharmacology. Hitting the hot spots of cell signaling cascades. Science 312: 377–378.

A journal article with 2 authors

GERSON AR, GUGLIELMO CG (2011). Flight at low ambient humidity increases protein catabolism in migratory birds. Science 333: 1434–1436.

A journal article with 3 authors

REES M, KOPPELMAN B, DAVISON N (2010). Scientific steps to nuclear disarmament. Nature 465: 290–291.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

ZHOU H, GUO J, LI P, FAN T, ZHANG D, YE J (2013). Leaf-architectured 3D hierarchical artificial photosynthetic system of perovskite titanates towards CO₂ photoreduction into hydrocarbon fuels. Sci Rep 3: 1667.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

SNAPE S (2011). Ancient Egyptian Tombs. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

DAKORA FD, CHIMPHANGO SBM, VALENTINE AJ, ELMERICH C, NEWTON WE (Eds) (2008). Biological Nitrogen Fixation: Towards Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Agriculture: Proceedings of the 15th International Nitrogen Fixation Congress and the 12th International Conference of the African Association for Biological Nitrogen Fixation. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

SERRA C, ANDREONE A (2016). Imaging of NETs. In PET/CT in Neuroendocrine Tumors (Eds V Ambrosini and S Fanti). Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 19–24.

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 The International Journal of Developmental Biology.

Blog post

CARPINETI A (2017). Snow Features On Pluto Are Similar To Some We Find On Earth. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/snow-features-on-pluto-are-similar-to-some-we-find-on-earth/ [Accessed October 30, 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). Federal Research: Information on International Science and Technology Agreements. 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

AMANOUA KP (2014). Langue et identité dans les milieux populaires québécois et antillais. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana.

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

MCPHATE M (2016). Man Cuffed on Failure to Return VHS Tape. New York Times: A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tesmer, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Gerson and Guglielmo, 2011; Tesmer, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Gerson and Guglielmo, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Zhou et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	The International Journal of Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	Int. J. Dev. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0214-6282
ISSN (online)	1696-3547
Scope	Developmental Biology Embryology

Research and Writing Guides