How to format your references using the Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. 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
Goldin, D. S. (2000). Contributions to the u.s. Space program. Science 288, 2131c.
A journal article with 2 authors
Ikegami, T., and Ganesh, G. (2014). Watching novice action degrades expert motor performance: causation between action production and outcome prediction of observed actions by humans. Sci. Rep. 4, 6989.
A journal article with 3 authors
Nandal, P., Ravella, S. R., and Kuhad, R. C. (2013). Laccase production by Coriolopsis caperata RCK2011: optimization under solid state fermentation by Taguchi DOE methodology. Sci. Rep. 3, 1386.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Skryabin, D. V., Luan, F., Knight, J. C., and Russell, P. S. J. (2003). Soliton self-frequency shift cancellation in photonic crystal fibers. Science 301, 1705–1708.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
McLaughlin, T. A. (2010). Nonprofit Mergers and Alliances. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Vahid-Araghi, O. (2011). Friction-Induced Vibration in Lead Screw Drives. , ed. F. Golnaraghi New York, NY: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Wimmer, R., Jansen, N., Vorpahl, A., Ábrahám, E., Katoen, J.-P., and Becker, B. (2013). “High-Level Counterexamples for Probabilistic Automata,” in Quantitative Evaluation of Systems: 10th International Conference, QEST 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 27-30, 2013. Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science., eds. K. Joshi, M. Siegle, M. Stoelinga, and P. R. D’Argenio (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 39–54.

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 Computational Neuroscience.

Blog post
Hale, T. (2016). Mixing These Two Common Medications Could Be Life-Threatening. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mixing-these-two-common-medications-could-be-lifethreatening/ [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 (2006). Telecommunications: Full Adoption of Sound Transition Planning Practices by GSA and Selected Agencies Could Improve Planning Efforts. 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
Reehal, G. (2012). Designing Low Power and High Performance Network-on-Chip Communication Architectures for Nanometer SoCs.

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
Gorman, J. (2016). Jaws: The Story of the Stag Beetle. New York Times, D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goldin, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Goldin, 2000; Ikegami and Ganesh, 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Ikegami and Ganesh, 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Skryabin et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Computational Neuroscience
AbbreviationFront. Comput. Neurosci.
ISSN (online)1662-5188
ScopeNeuroscience (miscellaneous)
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

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