How to format your references using the Cognitive Neuroscience citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Szidat, S. (2009). Atmosphere. Sources of Asian haze. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5913), 470–471.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hines, P. J., & Zahn, L. M. (2009). What’s bugging plants? Plant-microbe interactions. Introduction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5928), 741.
A journal article with 3 authors
Renvall, V., Nangini, C., & Hari, R. (2014). All that glitters is not BOLD: inconsistencies in functional MRI. Scientific Reports, 4, 3920.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Bhatt, D. H., Otto, S. J., Depoister, B., & Fetcho, J. R. (2004). Cyclic AMP-induced repair of zebrafish spinal circuits. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5681), 254–258.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Rezg, N., Dellagi, S., & Khatab, A. (2014). Joint Optimization of Maintenance and Production Policies. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Jensen, T. H. (Ed.). (2010). RNA Exosome (Vol. 702). Springer US.
A chapter in an edited book
Keune, J. D., & Hall, B. L. (2013). Understanding Quality and Cost from a Health Policy Perspective. In M. K. Sethi & W. H. Frist (Eds.), An Introduction to Health Policy: A Primer for Physicians and Medical Students (pp. 53–68). Springer.

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 Cognitive Neuroscience.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, August 10). How American Journalists Covered The First Use Of The Atomic Bomb. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/how-american-journalists-covered-first-use-atomic-bomb/

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. (1997). [Comments on Amtrak Labor Protection Issues] (B-277814). 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
Mylonas, A. (2014). “Women are the pillars of the family”: Athenian women’s survival strategies during economic crisis [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
Hirsch, G. A. (2011, April 24). The Humanity of the Long-Distance Runner. New York Times, SP10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Szidat, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Hines & Zahn, 2009; Szidat, 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Hines & Zahn, 2009)
  • Three authors: (Renvall et al., 2014)
  • 6 or more authors: (Bhatt et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleCognitive Neuroscience
AbbreviationCogn. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)1758-8928
ISSN (online)1758-8936
ScopeCognitive Neuroscience

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