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

Supari, S. F. (2007). Q&A: Siti Fadilah Supari. Interviewed by Declan Butler. Nature 450, 1137.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gao, X., and Jiang, L. (2004). Biophysics: water-repellent legs of water striders. Nature 432, 36.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kuhn, J. R., Emilio, M., and Bush, R. (2009). Comment on “A large excess in apparent solar oblateness due to surface magnetism.” Science 324, 1143; author reply 1143.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kato, M., Mizuno, K., Crozier, A., Fujimura, T., and Ashihara, H. (2000). Caffeine synthase gene from tea leaves. Nature 406, 956–957.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reed, S. M., and Hrci (2017). The HRCI Official Body of Knowledge. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Baptista, R., and Leitão, J. eds. (2015). Entrepreneurship, Human Capital, and Regional Development: Labor Networks, Knowledge Flows, and Industry Growth. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Dong, X., Clark, J. A., and Jacob, J. L. (2008). “Threat Modelling in User Performed Authentication,” in Information and Communications Security: 10th International Conference, ICICS 2008 Birmingham, UK, October 20 - 22, 2008 Proceedings, eds. L. Chen, M. D. Ryan, and G. Wang (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 49–64.

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). Astronaut Captures Spectacular Image Of Planetary Alignment From Space. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronaut-scott-kelly-captures-image-planets-near-alignment/ (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 (2007). Federal Aviation Administration: Challenges Facing the Agency in Fiscal Year 2008 and Beyond. 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

Sponsel, H. (2010). Was sagte dieser Schiller (damals)? Schillers Antworten auf seine Kritiker nach 1945. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017). Film Series. New York Times, C23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Supari, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Gao and Jiang, 2004; Supari, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Gao and Jiang, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Kato et al., 2000)

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