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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Hickman, H. D. (2015). Immunology. There goes the macrophage neighborhood. Science 347, 609–610.
A journal article with 2 authors
Belkhadir, Y., and Chory, J. (2006). Brassinosteroid signaling: a paradigm for steroid hormone signaling from the cell surface. Science 314, 1410–1411.
A journal article with 3 authors
McDonald, J. J., Teder-Sälejärvi, W. A., and Ward, L. M. (2001). Multisensory integration and crossmodal attention effects in the human brain. Science 292, 1791.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
LeMieux, M. C., Roberts, M., Barman, S., Jin, Y. W., Kim, J. M., and Bao, Z. (2008). Self-sorted, aligned nanotube networks for thin-film transistors. Science 321, 101–104.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ciana, P. (2011). New Frontiers in Technical Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Humphreys, H. (2013). Infections in the Adult Intensive Care Unit. , eds. B. Winter and M. Paul London: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Belloni, E., Milani, D., and Braghin, F. (2015). “An Innovative Tribometer for Measurements Between Sport Fabrics and Ice,” in Sensors and Instrumentation, Volume 5: Proceedings of the 33rd IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, 2015 Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series., ed. E. Wee Sit (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 37–44.

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). Trials A Step Forward For Medicinal Cannabis But What Comes Next? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/trials-step-forward-medicinal-cannabis-what-comes-next/ [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 (2014). Information Technology: HUD’s Expenditure Plan Satisfied Statutory Conditions; Sustained Controls and Modernization Approach Needed. 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
Mueller, C. (2012). A Multidimensional Perspective of Faculty Mentoring and Job Satisfaction during the First Year of Teaching at Lindenwood 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
Otis, J. (2016). Raising 5 Sons Alone, 3 With Autism, Takes a Toll. New York Times, A27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hickman, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Belkhadir and Chory, 2006; Hickman, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Belkhadir and Chory, 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (LeMieux et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Neural Circuits
AbbreviationFront. Neural Circuits
ISSN (online)1662-5110
ScopeNeuroscience (miscellaneous)
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Sensory Systems

Other styles