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

Wilczek, F. (2000). Particle physics. Backyard exotica. Nature 404, 452–453.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sun, F., and He, S. (2014). Transformation magneto-statics and illusions for magnets. Sci. Rep. 4, 6593.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hauke, P., Tagliacozzo, L., and Lewenstein, M. (2012). Physics. Speeding up quantum field theories. Science 336, 1122–1123.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Gao, M., Labuda, T., Xia, Y., Gallagher, E., Fang, D., Liu, Y.-C., et al. (2004). Jun turnover is controlled through JNK-dependent phosphorylation of the E3 ligase Itch. Science 306, 271–275.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deutscher Beton- und Bautechnik-Ver (2015). Beispiele zur Bemessung nach Eurocode 2. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Meyers, R. A. ed. (2011). Complex Systems in Finance and Econometrics. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ziemba, E., and Kolasa, I. (2016). “Risk Factors Relationships for Information Systems Projects – Insight from Polish Public Organizations,” in Information Technology for Management: Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, ISM 2015 and AITM 2015, Lodz, Poland, September 2015, Revised Selected Papers Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing., ed. E. Ziemba (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 55–76.

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

Hale, T. (2017). Watch Two Of Australia’s Most Infamous Snakes Go Head-To-Head In A Battle To The Death. 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 (2014). Healthcare.gov: Contract Planning and Oversight Practices Were Ineffective Given the Challenges and Risks. 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

Coyle, M. (2017). Pre-Service School Counselor’s Perception of Professional Identity Development During Internship.

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

Ortved, J. (2016). Trading a T Square for Showbiz. 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 (Wilczek, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Wilczek, 2000; Sun and He, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Sun and He, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Gao et al., 2004)

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