How to format your references using the Frontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine. 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
Clement, B. M. (2004). Dependence of the duration of geomagnetic polarity reversals on site latitude. Nature 428, 637–640.
A journal article with 2 authors
Geballe, T. R., and Oka, T. (2006). Astronomy. A key molecular ion in the universe and in the laboratory. Science 312, 1610–1612.
A journal article with 3 authors
Wolfe, C. J., Okubo, P. G., and Shearer, P. M. (2003). Mantle fault zone beneath Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. Science 300, 478–480.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Cornelissen, J. J., Donners, J. J., de Gelder, R., Graswinckel, W. S., Metselaar, G. A., Rowan, A. E., et al. (2001). beta -Helical polymers from isocyanopeptides. Science 293, 676–680.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Waupsh, J. (2016). Bankruption. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Diudea, M. V., and Nagy, C. L. eds. (2007). Periodic Nanostructures. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Ahonen, P., Alahuhta, P., Daskala, B., Delaitre, S., Hert, P. D., Lindner, R., et al. (2010). “Safeguards,” in Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence, eds. P. Alahuhta, B. Daskala, S. Delaitre, P. D. Hert, R. Lindner, I. Maghiros, et al. (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 179–251.

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 Spinal Cord Medicine.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014). Water Vapour Discovered In The Atmosphere Of Neptune-Sized Exoplanet. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/neptune-sized-exoplanet-has-clear-skies-and-water-vapor-atmosphere/ (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). Transition Series: Information Technology Issues. 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
Whitesides, V. J. (2017). The Large Ensemble/European Classical Music Paradigm and African American-Originated Dance-Musicking: A Dispositival Analysis of U.S. Secondary Music Education. 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
Vecsey, G. (2010). When Loss Means Disappointment, Not Disaster. New York Times, D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clement, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Clement, 2004; Geballe and Oka, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Geballe and Oka, 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (Cornelissen et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine
AbbreviationFront. Neurol.
ISSN (online)1664-2295
ScopeClinical Neurology
Neurology

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