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

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

Hook, J. (2006). Mathematics. Exploring musical space. Science 313, 49–50.

A journal article with 2 authors

Daw, N. D., and Dayan, P. (2004). Neuroscience. Matchmaking. Science 304, 1753–1754.

A journal article with 3 authors

Betrouche, M., Maamache, M., and Choi, J. R. (2013). Novel characteristics of energy spectrum for 3D Dirac oscillator analyzed via Lorentz covariant deformed algebra. Sci. Rep. 3, 3221.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Duggen, S., Hoernle, K., van den Bogaard, P., Rüpke, L., and Morgan, J. P. (2003). Deep roots of the Messinian salinity crisis. Nature 422, 602–606.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hartfuß, H.-J., and Geist, T. (2013). Fusion Plasma Diagnostics with mm-Waves. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. J., and Sherborne, T. eds. (2014). Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques., 2nd ed. 2014. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Pelekis, N., and Theodoridis, Y. (2014). “Mobility Database Management,” in Mobility Data Management and Exploration, ed. Y. Theodoridis (New York, NY: Springer), 75–99.

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 Neuroscience.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2017). This Time-Lapse Of Cell Division In A Tadpole Egg Is Apparently Real. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/this-time-lapse-of-cell-division-in-a-tadpole-egg-is-apparently-real/ (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 (1990). Air Traffic Control: The Interim Support Plan Does Not Meet FAA’s Needs. 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

Schoettler, M. R. (2017). A Publish-Subscribe Framework for Embedded Systems: Simplifying the Development Process. 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

Walsh, M. W. (2012). Moody’s Downgrade Deepens Puerto Rico’s Economic Problems. New York Times, B9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hook, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Daw and Dayan, 2004; Hook, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Daw and Dayan, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Duggen et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Front. Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1662-453X
Scope	General Neuroscience