How to format your references using the Cortex citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cortex. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Udem, T. (2005). Chemistry. Short and sharp-spectroscopy with frequency combs. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5708), 364–365.
A journal article with 2 authors
Morgan, M. A., & Shilatifard, A. (2013). Medicine. (Poly)combing the pediatric cancer genome for answers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 340(6134), 823–824.
A journal article with 3 authors
Peizhen, Z., Molnar, P., & Downs, W. R. (2001). Increased sedimentation rates and grain sizes 2-4 Myr ago due to the influence of climate change on erosion rates. Nature, 410(6831), 891–897.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Campbell, B. A., Campbell, D. B., Chandler, J. F., Hine, A. A., Nolan, M. C., & Perillat, P. J. (2003). Radar imaging of the lunar poles. Nature, 426(6963), 137–138.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Hitz, C. B., Ewing, J., & Hecht, J. (2012). Introduction to Laser Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Kunz, T., & Ravi, S. S. (Eds.). (2006). Ad-Hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks: 5th International Conference, ADHOC-NOW 2006, Ottawa, Canada, August 17-19, 2006. Proceedings (Vol. 4104). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Hemenway, B., Libert, B., Ostrovsky, R., & Vergnaud, D. (2011). Lossy Encryption: Constructions from General Assumptions and Efficient Selective Opening Chosen Ciphertext Security. In D. H. Lee & X. Wang (Eds.), Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2011: 17th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security, Seoul, South Korea, December 4-8, 2011. Proceedings (pp. 70–88). 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 Cortex.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2014, December 2). How Trauma Early In Life Influences Later Behavior. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/fathers-stress-may-benefit-offspring/

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. (1993). Educational Achievement Standards: NAGB’s Approach Yields Misleading Interpretations (PEMD-93-12). 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
Melhorn, S. J. (2009). The microstructure of food intake under conditions of high-fat diet, social stress and social subordination [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Cincinnati.

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
Wyndham, S. (2017, September 4). The Circles of Hellhaus. New York Times, BR19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Udem, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Morgan & Shilatifard, 2013; Udem, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Morgan & Shilatifard, 2013)
  • Three authors: (Peizhen et al., 2001)
  • 6 or more authors: (Campbell et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleCortex
AbbreviationCortex
ISSN (print)0010-9452
ScopeCognitive Neuroscience
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology

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