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

Torsvik, T. H. (2003). Geology. The Rodinia jigsaw puzzle. Science 300, 1379–1381.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nakar, E., and Piran, T. (2011). Detectable radio flares following gravitational waves from mergers of binary neutron stars. Nature 478, 82–84.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lavine, M., Szuromi, P., and Coontz, R. (2011). Materials for grid energy. Electricity now and when. Introduction. Science 334, 921.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Qi, B., Cong, Q., Li, P., Ma, G., Guo, X., Yeh, J., et al. (2014). Ablation of Tak1 in osteoclast progenitor leads to defects in skeletal growth and bone remodeling in mice. Sci. Rep. 4, 7158.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hens, H. (2012). Building Physics - Heat, Air and Moisture. Berlin, Germany: Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Youm, H. Y., and Yung, M. eds. (2009). Information Security Applications: 10th International Workshop, WISA 2009, Busan, Korea, August 25-27, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Launer, L. J. (2010). “Diabetes and the Brain – An Epidemiologic Perspective,” in Diabetes, Insulin and Alzheimer’s Disease, eds. S. Craft and Y. Christen (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 73–80.

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). Early Scorpions May Have Transitioned To Land Earlier Than Thought. 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 (1991). Computer Operations: FAA Needs to Implement an Effective Capacity Management Program. 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

Prendergast, C. A. (2017). Nontraditional online students perceptions on student success conditions. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University.

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

Sánchez, Y. (2014). Goliath Opens His Wallet. New York Times, A35.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Torsvik, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Torsvik, 2003; Nakar and Piran, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Nakar and Piran, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Qi et al., 2014)

About the journal

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