How to format your references using the Frontiers in Cognitive Science citation style

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

Janssen, M. A. (2012). Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012). Nature 487, 172.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gagliardi, L., and Roos, B. O. (2005). Quantum chemical calculations show that the uranium molecule U2 has a quintuple bond. Nature 433, 848–851.

A journal article with 3 authors

Langmore, N. E., Hunt, S., and Kilner, R. M. (2003). Escalation of a coevolutionary arms race through host rejection of brood parasitic young. Nature 422, 157–160.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lemche, E., Giampietro, V. P., Brammer, M. J., Surguladze, S. A., Williams, S. C. R., and Phillips, M. L. (2013). Somatization severity associated with postero-medial complex structures. Sci. Rep. 3, 1032.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

O’Malley, C. (2014). Bonds Without Borders. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Butler, M. G., Lee, P. D. K., and Whitman, B. Y. eds. (2006). Management of Prader-Willi Syndrome., Third Edition. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Andrés, B., Poler, R., and Hernández, J. E. (2013). “An Operational Planning Solution for SMEs in Collaborative and Non-Hierarchical Networks,” in Decision Support Systems II - Recent Developments Applied to DSS Network Environments: Euro Working Group Workshop, EWG-DSS 2012, Liverpool, UK, April 12-13, 2012, and Vilnius, Lithuania, July 8-11, 2012, Revised Selected and Extended Papers, eds. J. E. Hernández, S. Liu, B. Delibašić, P. Zaraté, F. Dargam, and R. Ribeiro (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 46–56.

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 Cognitive Science.

Blog post

Evans, K. (2016). See If You Can Solve These 6 Fiendish Brain-Teasers Written By NSA Employees. IFLScience.

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 (1988). [Comments on DOT Authority To Requisition Vessels]. 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

Maldonado, A. (2012). Incorporating abilities awareness into a bullying prevention program. 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

Pilon, M. (2012). Britain Adds Olympian. New York Times, B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Janssen, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Gagliardi and Roos, 2005; Janssen, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Gagliardi and Roos, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Lemche et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Cognitive Science
Abbreviation	Front. Psychol.
ISSN (online)	1664-1078
Scope	General Psychology