How to format your references using the Frontiers in Neural Circuits citation style

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

Binder, P.-M. (2008). Mathematics. Frustration in complexity. Science 320, 322–323.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brawley, C., and Matunis, E. (2004). Regeneration of male germline stem cells by spermatogonial dedifferentiation in vivo. Science 304, 1331–1334.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xu, L., Li, X.-Q., and Sun, Q.-F. (2014). Revisit the spin-FET: multiple reflection, inelastic scattering, and lateral size effects. Sci. Rep. 4, 7527.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wang, J., Yao, Z., Lei, T., and Poon, A. W. (2014). Silicon coupled-resonator optical-waveguide-based biosensors using light-scattering pattern recognition with pixelized mode-field-intensity distributions. Sci. Rep. 4, 7528.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gray, R. (2011). A History of American Literature. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Wiesel, S. W., and Delahay, J. N. eds. (2011). Essentials of Orthopedic Surgery. 4th ed. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gao, F., Xing, C., and Wang, G. (2014). “Channel Estimation for PLNC Under Time-Selective Fading Scenario,” in Channel Estimation for Physical Layer Network Coding Systems SpringerBriefs in Computer Science., eds. C. Xing and G. Wang (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 59–77.

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 Neural Circuits.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Scientists Use The Power Of Acoustics For Real-Life Levitation. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/scientists-use-power-acoustics-real-life-levitation/ [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 (1988). Obtaining Care for Chronically Ill Children in the Home Based Setting. 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

O’Neal, L. (2016). What’s in Your Toolbox?: Examining Tool Choices at Two Middle and Late Woodland-Period Sites on Florida’s Central Gulf Coast.

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

(nyt), S. K. (2001). World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Agreement On Moldova Rebels. New York Times, A9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Binder, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Brawley and Matunis, 2004; Binder, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Brawley and Matunis, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Neural Circuits
Abbreviation	Front. Neural Circuits
ISSN (online)	1662-5110
Scope	Neuroscience (miscellaneous) Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Sensory Systems