How to format your references using the Frontiers in Brain Imaging Methods citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Brain Imaging Methods. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Kling, J. (2015). Cytometry: Measure for measure. Nature 518, 439–443.

A journal article with 2 authors

Courseaux, A., and Nahon, J. L. (2001). Birth of two chimeric genes in the Hominidae lineage. Science 291, 1293–1297.

A journal article with 3 authors

Berson, D. M., Dunn, F. A., and Takao, M. (2002). Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock. Science 295, 1070–1073.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Forkey, J. N., Quinlan, M. E., Shaw, M. A., Corrie, J. E. T., and Goldman, Y. E. (2003). Three-dimensional structural dynamics of myosin V by single-molecule fluorescence polarization. Nature 422, 399–404.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Malpass, D. B., and Band, E. I. (2012). Introduction to Industrial Polypropylene. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Schwarzer, G. (2015). Meta-Analysis with R., eds. J. R. Carpenter and G. Rücker. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Bliem, B., and Woltran, S. (2016). “Complexity of Secure Sets,” in Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 41st International Workshop, WG 2015, Garching, Germany, June 17-19, 2015, Revised Papers, ed. E. W. Mayr (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 64–77.

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 Frontiers in Brain Imaging Methods.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014). Microbes Caused The Extinction Of 90% Of Species 250 Million Years Ago. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/microbes-caused-extinction-90-species-250-million-years-ago/ (Accessed October 30, 2018).

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 (2008). Transportation Security: TSA Has Developed a Risk-Based Covert Testing Program, but Could Better Mitigate Aviation Security Vulnerabilities Identified Through Covert Tests. Washington, DC: 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

Anisko, J. J. (2012). Selling Mexico’s vistas: A visual discourse analysis of promotional materials of Loreto Bay, Mexico. Long Beach, CA: 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

Paulson, M. (2017). ‘Hamilton’ Tries New Tactic to Battle Bots and Scalpers. New York Times, C5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kling, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Courseaux and Nahon, 2001; Kling, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Courseaux and Nahon, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Forkey et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Brain Imaging Methods
Abbreviation	Front. Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1662-453X
Scope	General Neuroscience