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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Developmental Biology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Beattie, G.A. Microbiomes: Curating Communities from Plants. Nature 2015, 528, 340–341.

A journal article with 2 authors

Anastasiadou, E.; Slack, F.J. Cancer. Malicious Exosomes. Science 2014, 346, 1459–1460.

A journal article with 3 authors

Selje, N.; Simon, M.; Brinkhoff, T. A Newly Discovered Roseobacter Cluster in Temperate and Polar Oceans. Nature 2004, 427, 445–448.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Metzger, E.; Wissmann, M.; Yin, N.; Müller, J.M.; Schneider, R.; Peters, A.H.F.M.; Günther, T.; Buettner, R.; Schüle, R. LSD1 Demethylates Repressive Histone Marks to Promote Androgen-Receptor-Dependent Transcription. Nature 2005, 437, 436–439.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Higman, B.W. How Food Made History; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2011; ISBN 9781444344677.

An edited book

Frontiers of Multifunctional Integrated Nanosystems; Buzaneva, E., Scharff, P., Eds.; NATO Science Series II: Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2005; Vol. 152; ISBN 9781402021718.

A chapter in an edited book

Madden, B. Putting It All Together. In Treatment of Pulmonary Hypertension; Madden, B., Ed.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; pp. 171–176 ISBN 9783319135809.

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 Journal of Developmental Biology.

Blog post

Fang, J. Heart-Regenerating Cells Found in Coronary Arteries Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/heart-regenerating-cells-found-coronary-arteries/ (accessed on 30 October 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 Comments on JTPA Bills; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1992;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Nam, S. A Method for Teaching Jazz Improvisation to Beginning Pianists in a Group Setting. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2010.

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

Hubbard, B. Qaeda-Linked Militants Are Finding Elbow Room Among Syria’s Displaced. New York Times 2017, A6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	J. Dev. Biol.
ISSN (online)	2221-3759
Scope