How to format your references using the Cognition citation style

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

Helliwell, J. R. (2013). Biochemistry. How to solve protein structures with an X-ray laser. Science (New York, N.Y.), 339(6116), 146–147.

A journal article with 2 authors

Allen, M. R., & Stainforth, D. A. (2002). Towards objective probabalistic climate forecasting. Nature, 419(6903), 228.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cannistraci, C. V., Alanis-Lobato, G., & Ravasi, T. (2013). From link-prediction in brain connectomes and protein interactomes to the local-community-paradigm in complex networks. Scientific Reports, 3, 1613.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Björkman, T., Kurasch, S., Lehtinen, O., Kotakoski, J., Yazyev, O. V., Srivastava, A., Skakalova, V., Smet, J. H., Kaiser, U., & Krasheninnikov, A. V. (2013). Defects in bilayer silica and graphene: common trends in diverse hexagonal two-dimensional systems. Scientific Reports, 3, 3482.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Carrasco, R. A., & Johnston, M. (2008). Non-Binary Error Control Coding for Wireless Communication and Data Storage. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Koslow, A., & Buchsbaum, A. (Eds.). (2015). The Road to Universal Logic: Festschrift for the 50th Birthday of Jean-Yves Béziau Volume II. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Lyubina, J. (2016). Magnetocaloric Materials. In A. Zhukov (Ed.), Novel Functional Magnetic Materials: Fundamentals and Applications (pp. 115–186). Springer International Publishing.

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 Cognition.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2016, June 14). Italian Daredevil Wingsuits Over Active Chilean Volcano. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/italian-daredevil-wingsuits-over-active-chilean-volcano/

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. (2007). Transportation Security: DHS Efforts to Eliminate Redundant Background Check Investigations (GAO-07-756). 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

Beaven, L. (2014). Epiphanies of soul: “When the bolts of the universe fly open.” A depth psychological contemplation of wonder [Doctoral dissertation]. Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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

Walsh, M. W. (2014, October 12). No Smoke, No Mirrors: The Dutch Pension Plan. New York Times, BU1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Helliwell, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Allen & Stainforth, 2002; Helliwell, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Allen & Stainforth, 2002)
Three authors: (Cannistraci et al., 2013)
6 or more authors: (Björkman et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Cognition
Abbreviation	Cognition
ISSN (print)	0010-0277
Scope	Language and Linguistics Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Linguistics and Language