How to format your references using the World Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for World 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

Dalton, R. (2001). Arson hampers conservation work. Nature, 411(6837), 509.

A journal article with 2 authors

Vanag, V. K., & Epstein, I. R. (2001). Inwardly rotating spiral waves in a reaction-diffusion system. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5543), 835–837.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wearn, O. R., Reuman, D. C., & Ewers, R. M. (2013). Response to comment on “Extinction debt and windows of conservation opportunity in the Brazilian Amazon.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 339(6117), 271.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Tumbar, T., Guasch, G., Greco, V., Blanpain, C., Lowry, W. E., Rendl, M., & Fuchs, E. (2004). Defining the epithelial stem cell niche in skin. Science (New York, N.Y.), 303(5656), 359–363.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Misra, D. K. (2006). Practical Electromagnetics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Koskinen, U. (Ed.). (2016). Aggressive and Violent Peasant Elites in the Nordic Countries, C. 1500-1700. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Harries, T. (2013). Responding to Flood Risk in the UK. In H. Joffe, T. Rossetto, & J. Adams (Eds.), Cities at Risk: Living with Perils in the 21st Century (pp. 45–72). Springer Netherlands.

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 World Development.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015, March 24). Prehistoric Human-Sized Salamander was a Top Predator. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/prehistoric-human-sized-salamander-was-top-predator/

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. (2012). Department of Homeland Security: Oversight and Coordination of Research and Development Should Be Strengthened (GAO-12-837). 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

Whitman, S. (2012). Operational risk and financial institution leaders’ decision making: A quantitative descriptive correlation study [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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

Gluck, J. P. (2016, September 2). Regretting My Animal Research. New York Times, SR7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dalton, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Dalton, 2001; Vanag & Epstein, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Vanag & Epstein, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Tumbar et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	World Development
Abbreviation	World Dev.
ISSN (print)	0305-750X
Scope	Economics and Econometrics Development Geography, Planning and Development Sociology and Political Science