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

Diamond, J. (2004). Anthropology. The astonishing micropygmies. Science 306, 2047–2048.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gamlin, P. D., and Yoon, K. (2000). An area for vergence eye movement in primate frontal cortex. Nature 407, 1003–1007.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schaedler, T. A., Jacobsen, A. J., and Carter, W. B. (2013). Materials science. Toward lighter, stiffer materials. Science 341, 1181–1182.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chao, J.-R., Parganas, E., Boyd, K., Hong, C. Y., Opferman, J. T., and Ihle, J. N. (2008). Hax1-mediated processing of HtrA2 by Parl allows survival of lymphocytes and neurons. Nature 452, 98–102.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Levin, R. (2011). Implementing the Wealth Management Index. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Johansson, P.-O. (2013). Evaluating Water Projects: Cost-Benefit Analysis Versus Win-Win Approach., ed. B. Kriström. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Higashi, N. (2015). “Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopy and Deep-Ultraviolet Spectroscopy: Industrial Applications,” in Far- and Deep-Ultraviolet Spectroscopy, eds. Y. Ozaki and S. Kawata (Tokyo: Springer Japan), 77–98.

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

Andrew, D. (2015). A Day In The Life Of Pi. IFLScience.

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 (2003). Federal-Aid Highways: Cost and Oversight of Major Highway and Bridge Projects--Issues and Options. 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

Felder Derkacs, A. D. (2010). The role of desmin in the signaling response to mechanical stretch of skeletal muscle. La Jolla, CA: University of California San Diego.

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

Pilon, M. (2012). I.O.C. Opens Inquiry Into Resale Of Tickets. New York Times, D7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Diamond, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Gamlin and Yoon, 2000; Diamond, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Gamlin and Yoon, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Chao et al., 2008)

About the journal

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