How to format your references using the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 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 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

Meyer, G. (2015). Playing the field. Science (New York, N.Y.), 348(6237), 938.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sommaruga, R., & Kandolf, G. (2014). Negative consequences of glacial turbidity for the survival of freshwater planktonic heterotrophic flagellates. Scientific Reports, 4, 4113.

A journal article with 3 authors

Monje, M. L., Toda, H., & Palmer, T. D. (2003). Inflammatory blockade restores adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5651), 1760–1765.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Langowski, J. L., Zhang, X., Wu, L., Mattson, J. D., Chen, T., Smith, K., Basham, B., McClanahan, T., Kastelein, R. A., & Oft, M. (2006). IL-23 promotes tumour incidence and growth. Nature, 442(7101), 461–465.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Leleux, B., van Swaay, H., & Megally, E. (2015). Private Equity 4.0. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Baum, R. P., & Rösch, F. (Eds.). (2013). Theranostics, Gallium-68, and Other Radionuclides: A Pathway to Personalized Diagnosis and Treatment (Vol. 194). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Martin, A., & Monroe, K. R. (2009). Identity, Moral Choice, and the Moral Imagination: Is There a Neuroscientific Foundation for Altruism? In T. Cross & D. Ambrose (Eds.), Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds (pp. 73–87). Springer US.

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 Experimental Child Psychology.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015, November 16). North Face Has Created A Coat Made From Biotech Spider Silk. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/north-face-have-made-coat-made-biotech-spider-silk/

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. (2009). Highway Trust Fund: Improved Solvency Mechanisms and Communication Needed to Help Avoid Shortfalls in the Highway Account (GAO-09-316). 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

Krishna, V. (2008). Exploring organizational commitment from an organizational perspective: Organizational learning as a determinant of affective commitment in Indian software firms [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington University.

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

Feeney, K. (2007, February 18). Cross-Cultural Confections. New York Times, NJ6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Meyer, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Meyer, 2015; Sommaruga & Kandolf, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Sommaruga & Kandolf, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Langowski et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Abbreviation	J. Exp. Child Psychol.
ISSN (print)	0022-0965
Scope	Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology