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

Sligar, S. G. (2010). Chemistry. Glimpsing the critical intermediate in cytochrome P450 oxidations. Science 330, 924–925.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zeh, J. A., and Zeh, D. W. (2006). Outbred embryos rescue inbred half-siblings in mixed-paternity broods of live-bearing females. Nature 439, 201–203.

A journal article with 3 authors

Merlin, C., Gegear, R. J., and Reppert, S. M. (2009). Antennal circadian clocks coordinate sun compass orientation in migratory monarch butterflies. Science 325, 1700–1704.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Green, M. A., Zhao, J., Wang, A., Reece, P. J., and Gal, M. (2001). Efficient silicon light-emitting diodes. Nature 412, 805–808.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety (2003). Guidelines for Investigating Chemical Process Incidents. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kappel, G., Maamar, Z., and Motahari-Nezhad, H. R. eds. (2011). Service-Oriented Computing: 9th International Conference, ICSOC 2011, Paphos, Cyprus, December 5-8, 2011 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Henkel, M., and Pleimling, M. (2010). “Local Scale-invariance II: z =/ 2,” in Non-Equilibrium Phase Transitions: Volume 2: Ageing and Dynamical Scaling Far from Equilibrium Theoretical and Mathematical Physics., ed. M. Pleimling (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 291–336.

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

Andrews, R. (2016). What Type Of Nuclear Weapon Did North Korea Just Detonate? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/type-nuclear-weapon-north-korea-detonate/ [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 (2004). Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellites: Information on Program Cost and Schedule Changes. 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

Stoecker, K. (2013). Transfer of Topic-Prominence in Chinese-English Interlanguage.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2006). Arizona’s Strict Approach to Insanity Defenses Gets a Hearing Before the Supreme Court. New York Times, A25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sligar, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Zeh and Zeh, 2006; Sligar, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Zeh and Zeh, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Green et al., 2001)

About the journal

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