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

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

Jaffe, H. (2004). Public health. Whatever happened to the U.S. AIDS epidemic? Science 305, 1243–1244.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schwartz, M. A., and Chen, C. S. (2013). Cell biology. Deconstructing dimensionality. Science 339, 402–404.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gollo, L. L., Kinouchi, O., and Copelli, M. (2013). Single-neuron criticality optimizes analog dendritic computation. Sci. Rep. 3, 3222.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Fleming, I. A., Einum, S., Jonsson, B., and Jonsson, N. (2003). Comment on “rapid evolution of egg size in captive Salmon.” Science 302, 59; discussion 59.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rimai, D. S. (2016). Patent Engineering. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Abawajy, J. H., Mukherjea, S., Thampi, S. M., and Ruiz-Martínez, A. eds. (2015). Security in Computing and Communications: Third International Symposium, SSCC 2015, Kochi, India, August 10-13, 2015. Proceedings., 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Kaltsas, G., Zannas, A. S., and Chrousos, G. P. (2012). “Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis and Cardiovascular Disease,” in Stress and Cardiovascular Disease, eds. P. Hjemdahl, A. Steptoe, and A. Rosengren (London: Springer), 71–87.

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 Psychology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2016). Are We Alone? Life On Earth May Have Formed Prematurely. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/are-we-alone-life-on-earth-may-have-formed-prematurely/ (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 (1995). Federally Funded R&D Centers: Use of Contract Fee by The Aerospace Corporation. 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

Jekanowski, E. C. (2017). District Leadership and Systemic Inclusion: A Case Study of One Inclusive and Effective School District. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic 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

Stelter, B. (2013). Waking Up On The Wrong Side Of A Rating War. New York Times, MM24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Jaffe, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Jaffe, 2004; Schwartz and Chen, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Schwartz and Chen, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Fleming et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Psychology
Abbreviation	Front. Psychol.
ISSN (online)	1664-1078
Scope	General Psychology