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

Cepko, C. (2010). Neuroscience. Seeing the light of day. Science 329, 403–404.

A journal article with 2 authors

Junquera, J., and Ghosez, P. (2003). Critical thickness for ferroelectricity in perovskite ultrathin films. Nature 422, 506–509.

A journal article with 3 authors

Thomas, D. S. G., Knight, M., and Wiggs, G. F. S. (2005). Remobilization of southern African desert dune systems by twenty-first century global warming. Nature 435, 1218–1221.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Gibson, Q. D., Evtushinsky, D., Yaresko, A. N., Zabolotnyy, V. B., Ali, M. N., Fuccillo, M. K., et al. (2014). Quasi one dimensional Dirac electrons on the surface of Ru₂Sn₃. Sci. Rep. 4, 5168.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Campbell, A. K. (2014). Intracellular Calcium. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Nasr, E. A. (2007). Computer-Based Design and Manufacturing: An Information-Based Approach., ed. A. K. Kamrani. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Hagras, H., and Wagner, C. (2011). “Artefact Adaptation in Ambient Intelligent Environments,” in Next Generation Intelligent Environments: Ambient Adaptive Systems, eds. W. Minker and T. Heinroth (New York, NY: Springer), 127–151.

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

Evans, K. (2017). Study Finds Link Between Gluten-Free Diet And Type 2 Diabetes Risk. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/study-finds-link-between-glutenfree-diet-and-type-2-diabetes-risk/ (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). NATO-Warsaw Pact: U.S. and Soviet Perspectives of the Conventional Force Balance. 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

Watson, W. A. (2010). Middle school students’ experiences on a science museum field trip as Preparation for Future Learning. 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

Greenhouse, L. (2007). Court to Weigh Disparities in Cocaine Laws. New York Times, A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cepko, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Junquera and Ghosez, 2003; Cepko, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Junquera and Ghosez, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Gibson 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