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:

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

Zhang, X. (2014). Plant science. Delayed gratification--waiting to terminate stem cell identity. Science 343, 498–499.

A journal article with 2 authors

Elena, S. F., and Sanjuán, R. (2003). Evolution. Climb every mountain? Science 302, 2074–2075.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhu, A., Ding, C., and Tian, Y. (2013). A two-photon ratiometric fluorescence probe for cupric ions in live cells and tissues. Sci. Rep. 3, 2933.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yoo, A. S., Staahl, B. T., Chen, L., and Crabtree, G. R. (2009). MicroRNA-mediated switching of chromatin-remodelling complexes in neural development. Nature 460, 642–646.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hood, D., and Trojer, E. (2012). Gigabit-Capable Passive Optical Networks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Chiu, D. K. W., Wang, M., Popescu, E., Li, Q., Lau, R., Shih, T. K., et al. eds. (2015). Advances in Web-Based Learning – ICWL 2013 Workshops: USL 2013, IWSLL 2013, KMEL 2013, IWCWL 2013, WIL 2013, and IWEEC 2013, Kenting, Taiwan, October 6-9, 2013, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Guan, J., Yao, S., Xu, C., and Zhang, H. (2014). “Design and Implementation of Network User Behaviors Analysis Based on Hadoop for Big Data,” in Applications and Techniques in Information Security: 5th International Conference, ATIS 2014, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, November 26-28, 2014. Proceedings Communications in Computer and Information Science., eds. L. Batten, G. Li, W. Niu, and M. Warren (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 44–55.

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

Hamilton, K. (2017). Earthworms Are More Important Than Pandas (If You Want To Save The Planet). 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 (1992). The First Step Toward Reform. 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

Bubert, E. A. (2009). Highly extensible skin for a variable wing-span morphing aircraft utilizing pneumatic artificial muscle actuation.

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

Barker, K., and Taylor, K. (2014). A Teacher Accused of Abuse Seen to Have Never Grown Up. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zhang, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Elena and Sanjuán, 2003; Zhang, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Elena and Sanjuán, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Yoo et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine
Abbreviation	Front. Neurol.
ISSN (online)	1664-2295
Scope	Clinical Neurology Neurology