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

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

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

Andelman, S. J. (2011). Conservation science outside the comfort zone. Nature 475, 290–291.

A journal article with 2 authors

Helms Cahan, S., and Keller, L. (2003). Complex hybrid origin of genetic caste determination in harvester ants. Nature 424, 306–309.

A journal article with 3 authors

True, H. L., Berlin, I., and Lindquist, S. L. (2004). Epigenetic regulation of translation reveals hidden genetic variation to produce complex traits. Nature 431, 184–187.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Neil, H., Malabat, C., d’Aubenton-Carafa, Y., Xu, Z., Steinmetz, L. M., and Jacquier, A. (2009). Widespread bidirectional promoters are the major source of cryptic transcripts in yeast. Nature 457, 1038–1042.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Robertson, B., Vignaux, G. A., and Berger, C. E. H. (2016). Interpreting Evidence. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Estévez, P. A., Príncipe, J. C., and Zegers, P. eds. (2013). Advances in Self-Organizing Maps: 9th International Workshop, WSOM 2012 Santiago, Chile, December 12-14, 2012 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ratnadass, A., Blanchart, É., and Lecomte, P. (2013). “Ecological Interactions Within the Biodiversity of Cultivated Systems,” in Cultivating Biodiversity to Transform Agriculture, ed. É. Hainzelin (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 141–179.

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 Molecular Neuroscience.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2016). Study Suggests Conservatives Are More Susceptible To Bullsh*t. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/are-conservatives-more-susceptible-bullsht/ (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 (1981). The Guaranteed Student Loan Information System Needs a Thorough Redesign To Account for the Expenditure of Billions. 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

Johnson, L. (2010). A cross-cultural examination of the needs and behaviors of female caregivers of cancer patients at the end of life: A theoretical elaboration. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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

Sisario, B., Spencer, H., and Ember, S. (2016). Magazine Loses Suit Charging Defamation. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Andelman, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Helms Cahan and Keller, 2003; Andelman, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Helms Cahan and Keller, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Neil et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Front. Mol. Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1662-5099
Scope	Molecular Biology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience