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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Jox, R. (2003). Europe chips in for training. Nature 425, 326.

A journal article with 2 authors

Palfrey, J., and Zittrain, J. (2011). Information science. Better data for a better Internet. Science 334, 1210–1211.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chandra, P., Coleman, P., and Flint, R. (2013). Hastatic order in the heavy-fermion compound URu2Si2. Nature 493, 621–626.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lin, C. I., Orlov, I., Ruggiero, A. M., Dykes-Hoberg, M., Lee, A., Jackson, M., et al. (2001). Modulation of the neuronal glutamate transporter EAAC1 by the interacting protein GTRAP3-18. Nature 410, 84–88.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Voldman, S. H. (2006). ESD. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Azimova, S. S., and Vinogradova, V. I. eds. (2013). Natural Compounds: Flavonoids. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Capozziello, S., and Faraoni, V. (2011). “Weak-field limit,” in Beyond Einstein Gravity: A Survey of Gravitational Theories for Cosmology and Astrophysics, ed. S. Capozziello (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 165–208.

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). HIV Could Be Evolving Into A Less Deadly Form. 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 (2006). Space Acquisitions: Improvements Needed in Space Systems Acquisitions and Keys to Achieving Them. 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

Catt, B. S. (2010). The reduction of surgical errors through a development of safety culture, teamwork, and communication. 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

Shear, M. D., and Weiland, N. (2017). Trump Lawyer Denies Inquiry, Reversing Boss. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Jox, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Jox, 2003; Palfrey and Zittrain, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Palfrey and Zittrain, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Lin et al., 2001)

About the journal

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