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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Educational 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:

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
Kirshner, R. (2010). John Huchra (1948-2010). Nature 468, 174.
A journal article with 2 authors
Rodrigues, A. R., and Tabin, C. J. (2013). Developmental biology. Deserts and waves in gene expression. Science 340, 1181–1182.
A journal article with 3 authors
Weaver, J. C., Vaughan, T. E., and Astumian, R. D. (2000). Biological sensing of small field differences by magnetically sensitive chemical reactions. Nature 405, 707–709.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Katsuda, T., Tsuchiya, R., Kosaka, N., Yoshioka, Y., Takagaki, K., Oki, K., et al. (2013). Human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells secrete functional neprilysin-bound exosomes. Sci. Rep. 3, 1197.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Holt, J. (2013). The Ultimate Daily Show and Philosophy. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.
An edited book
Fogliatto, F. S., and da Silveira, G. J. C. eds. (2011). Mass Customization: Engineering and Managing Global Operations. London: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Zeitler, J. A. (2016). “Pharmaceutical Terahertz Spectroscopy and Imaging,” in Analytical Techniques in the Pharmaceutical Sciences, eds. A. Müllertz, Y. Perrie, and T. Rades (New York, NY: Springer), 171–222.

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 Educational Psychology.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2015). Bright Flash, Possibly a Meteor, Blazed Over New Zealand. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/bright-flash-possibly-meteor-blazed-over-new-zealand/ (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 (2000). National Airspace System: Persistent Problems in FAA’s New Navigation System Highlight Need for Periodic Reevaluation. 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
Dinh, W. (2009). Elderly Vietnamese’ perceptions of the effects of Adult Day Health Care services on their mental and physical well-being. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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
Davey, M., and Walsh, M. W. (2014). Detroit Reaches Deal With Creditor, as Others Object to Bankruptcy Plans. New York Times, A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kirshner, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Kirshner, 2010; Rodrigues and Tabin, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Rodrigues and Tabin, 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Katsuda et al., 2013)

About the journal

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

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