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

Clack, J. A. (2002). An early tetrapod from “Romer’s Gap.” Nature 418, 72–76.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wei, J., and Tong, L. (2015). Crystal structure of the 500-kDa yeast acetyl-CoA carboxylase holoenzyme dimer. Nature 526, 723–727.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lin, D. Y.-W., Huang, S., and Chen, J. (2015). Crystal structures of a polypeptide processing and secretion transporter. Nature 523, 425–430.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chen, D., Pacal, M., Wenzel, P., Knoepfler, P. S., Leone, G., and Bremner, R. (2009). Division and apoptosis of E2f-deficient retinal progenitors. Nature 462, 925–929.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bitton, G. (2010). Wastewater Microbiology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Behnke, R., and Mortimore, M. eds. (2016). The End of Desertification?: Disputing Environmental Change in the Drylands. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hoffstein, J., Pipher, J., and Silverman, J. H. (2014). “Digital Signatures,” in An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics., eds. J. Pipher and J. H. Silverman (New York, NY: Springer), 193–205.

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

Fang, J. (2014). Were Dinosaurs Warm Or Cold Blooded? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/were-dinosaurs-warm-or-cold-blooded/ [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 (1989). ADP Planning: FDA’s Plans to Improve Processing of Medical Device and Drug Applications. 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

Yahil, R. J. (2010). The role of interleukin-19 in interleukin-10 production by regulatory macrophages.

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

Murphy, M. J. O. (2015). Friday File. New York Times, C26.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clack, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Clack, 2002; Wei and Tong, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Wei and Tong, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Chen et al., 2009)

About the journal

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