How to format your references using the Frontiers in Language Sciences citation style

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

Landis, C. R. (2015). Organic chemistry. Construction and deconstruction of aldehydes by transfer hydroformylation. Science 347, 29–30.

A journal article with 2 authors

Vance, S. A., and Sandros, M. G. (2014). Zeptomole detection of C-reactive protein in serum by a nanoparticle amplified surface plasmon resonance imaging aptasensor. Sci. Rep. 4, 5129.

A journal article with 3 authors

Srisonphan, S., Kim, M., and Kim, H. K. (2014). Space charge neutralization by electron-transparent suspended graphene. Sci. Rep. 4, 3764.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Cardinale, B. J., Srivastava, D. S., Duffy, J. E., Wright, J. P., Downing, A. L., Sankaran, M., et al. (2006). Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of trophic groups and ecosystems. Nature 443, 989–992.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wright, D. (2016). Using Commercial Contracts. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Holsboer, F., and Ströhle, A. eds. (2005). Anxiety and Anxiolytic Drugs. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Koszul, J. L. (2011). “Formes Harmoniques Vectorielles Sur Les Espaces Localement Symetriques,” in Geometry of Homogeneous Bounded Domains, ed. E. Vesentini (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 199–261.

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 Language Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014). “Diamond” Planets May Be More Abundant Than Predicted. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/diamond-planets-may-be-more-abundant-predicted/ (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). Mass Transit: Project Management Oversight Benefits and Future Funding Requirements. 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

McKinney, S. (2008). An analysis of the influence of No Child Left Behind and Arizona Learns on middle -school principal leadership behaviors and responsibilities. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

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

Rossellini, I. (1996). The Sphinx: Greta Garbo. New York Times, 685.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Landis, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Vance and Sandros, 2014; Landis, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Vance and Sandros, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Cardinale et al., 2006)

About the journal

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