How to format your references using the Frontiers in Comparative Psychology citation style

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

Porter, S. M. (2007). Seawater chemistry and early carbonate biomineralization. Science 316, 1302.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pascual-Leone, A., and Walsh, V. (2001). Fast backprojections from the motion to the primary visual area necessary for visual awareness. Science 292, 510–512.

A journal article with 3 authors

Oliveira, R. F., Carneiro, L. A., and Canário, A. V. M. (2005). Behavioural endocrinology: no hormonal response in tied fights. Nature 437, 207–208.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kagansky, A., Folco, H. D., Almeida, R., Pidoux, A. L., Boukaba, A., Simmer, F., et al. (2009). Synthetic heterochromatin bypasses RNAi and centromeric repeats to establish functional centromeres. Science 324, 1716–1719.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Takezawa, K. (2005). Introduction to Nonparametric Regression: Takezawa/Introduction. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Capitelli, M. (2013). Fundamental Aspects of Plasma Chemical Physics: Transport., eds. D. Bruno and A. Laricchiuta. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Nicola, F., and Rodino, L. (2010). “Γ-Pseudo-Differential Operators and H-Polynomials,” in Global Pseudo-Differential Calculus on Euclidean Spaces, ed. L. Rodino (Basel: Birkhäuser), 67–127.

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 Comparative Psychology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). How Flossing Gave This Woman A Knee Infection. 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 (2014). Traffic Safety: Alcohol Ignition Interlocks Are Effective While Installed; Less Is Known about How to Increase Installation Rates. 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

Simmons, C. (2008). Correlates and predictors of cognitive complexity among counseling and social work students in graduate training programs. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida.

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

Vecsey, G. (2010). Underfunded and Over the Top. New York Times, B20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Porter, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Pascual-Leone and Walsh, 2001; Porter, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Pascual-Leone and Walsh, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Kagansky et al., 2009)

About the journal

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