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:

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
Li, G. (2013). On the safety of ITER accelerators. Sci. Rep. 3, 2602.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hochberg, Y. V., and Fehder, D. C. (2015). ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Accelerators and ecosystems. Science 348, 1202–1203.
A journal article with 3 authors
Palop, J. J., Chin, J., and Mucke, L. (2006). A network dysfunction perspective on neurodegenerative diseases. Nature 443, 768–773.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Yang, P.-M., Lin, Y.-T., Shun, C.-T., Lin, S.-H., Wei, T.-T., Chuang, S.-H., et al. (2013). Zebularine inhibits tumorigenesis and stemness of colorectal cancer via p53-dependent endoplasmic reticulum stress. Sci. Rep. 3, 3219.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Rieth, M., and Krämer, N. (2016). Hygiene in der Arzneimittelproduktion. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Plag, H.-P., and Pearlman, M. eds. (2009). Global Geodetic Observing System: Meeting the Requirements of a Global Society on a Changing Planet in 2020. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Layer, E., and Tomczyk, K. (2010). “Mapping Error,” in Measurements, Modelling and Simulation of Dynamic Systems, ed. K. Tomczyk (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 127–150.

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
Andrew, E. (2015). Viruses Don’t Deserve Their Bad Rap: They’re The Unsung Heroes You Never See. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/viruses-don-t-deserve-their-bad-rap-they-re-unsung-heroes-you-never-see/ [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 (1988). Competition: Issues on Establishing and Using Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. 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
Jiang, W. (2010). Advanced techniques for semantic concept detection in general videos.

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
Risen, J. (2016). An Ex-Detainee, but Still a Captive of ‘The Darkness.’ New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Li, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Li, 2013; Hochberg and Fehder, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Hochberg and Fehder, 2015)
  • Three or more authors: (Yang et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Cognitive Science
AbbreviationFront. Psychol.
ISSN (online)1664-1078
ScopeGeneral Psychology

Other styles