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

Shastri, N. (2006). Cell biology. Peptides, scrambled and stitched. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5792), 1398–1399.

A journal article with 2 authors

Padian, K., & Dial, K. P. (2005). Origin of flight: Could “four-winged” dinosaurs fly? Nature, 438(7066), E3; discussion E3-4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Herrmann, B., Thöni, C., & Gächter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5868), 1362–1367.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hur, N., Park, S., Sharma, P. A., Ahn, J. S., Guha, S., & Cheong, S.-W. (2004). Electric polarization reversal and memory in a multiferroic material induced by magnetic fields. Nature, 429(6990), 392–395.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Glasgow, L. A. (2014). Applied Mathematics for Science and Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Berger, R. (2010). The Inequality Puzzle: European and US Leaders Discuss Rising Income Inequality (D. Grusky, T. Raffel, G. Samuels, & C. Wimer, Eds.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Arinaminpathy, N., Metcalf, C. J. E., & Grenfell, B. T. (2014). Viral Dynamics and Mathematical Models. In R. A. Kaslow, L. R. Stanberry, & J. W. Le Duc (Eds.), Viral Infections of Humans: Epidemiology and Control (pp. 81–96). 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 Cognition.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016, April 29). Smoking Cannabis While Pregnant May Increase Chance Of Babies Entering Intensive Care. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/smoking-cannabis-while-pregnant-increases-chance-babies-entering-intensive-care/

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. (1987). School Lunch Program: Evaluation of Alternatives to Commodity Donations (RCED-87-113). 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

Hernandez, A. N. (2017). Connecting the Community: A Grant Proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Sisario, B. (2016, November 7). Jeezy Tops Chart in 3-Way Battle. New York Times, C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Shastri, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Padian & Dial, 2005; Shastri, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Padian & Dial, 2005)
Three authors: (Herrmann et al., 2008)
6 or more authors: (Hur et al., 2004)

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