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

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

Ashrafian, H. (2015). Intelligent robots must uphold human rights. Nature 519, 391.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dalton, R., and Cyranoski, D. (2000). Baja peninsula claims five victims in tragic accident. Nature 404, 533.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lu, Z., Klem, A. M., and Ramu, Y. (2001). Ion conduction pore is conserved among potassium channels. Nature 413, 809–813.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Prigozy, T. I., Naidenko, O., Qasba, P., Elewaut, D., Brossay, L., Khurana, A., et al. (2001). Glycolipid antigen processing for presentation by CD1d molecules. Science 291, 664–667.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Evans, G. M., and Furlong, J. C. (2010). Environmental Biotechnology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Satapathy, S. C., Bhatt, Y. C., Joshi, A., and Mishra, D. K. eds. (2016). Proceedings of the International Congress on Information and Communication Technology: ICICT 2015, Volume 1. Singapore: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Kuosmanen, T., Keshvari, A., and Matin, R. K. (2015). “Discrete and Integer Valued Inputs and Outputs in Data Envelopment Analysis,” in Data Envelopment Analysis: A Handbook of Models and Methods, ed. J. Zhu (Boston, MA: Springer US), 67–103.

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 Synaptic Neuroscience.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Scientists Successfully Chop Out Mitochondrial DNA Mutations In Mouse Embryos. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-successfully-chop-out-mitochondrial-dna-mutations-mouse-embryos/ (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 (2006). Telecommunications: FCC Needs to Improve Its Ability to Monitor and Determine the Extent of Competition in Dedicated Access Services. 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

Byrd, M. L. (2012). Investigating an Afterschool Program for Black Teenage Males Designed to Increase Self-Efficacy. St. Charles, MO: Lindenwood 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

Gorman, J. (2017). Nature’s Escape Artists Build Living Towers. New York Times, D4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ashrafian, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Dalton and Cyranoski, 2000; Ashrafian, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Dalton and Cyranoski, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Prigozy et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Front. Synaptic Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1663-3563
Scope	Cell Biology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience