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

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

Smaglik, P. (2004). State of the unions. Nature 428, 965.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gold, J. I., and Shadlen, M. N. (2000). Representation of a perceptual decision in developing oculomotor commands. Nature 404, 390–394.

A journal article with 3 authors

Turk, M. J., Abel, T., and O’Shea, B. (2009). The formation of Population III binaries from cosmological initial conditions. Science 325, 601–605.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Weinstein, J. A., Jiang, N., White, R. A., 3rd, Fisher, D. S., and Quake, S. R. (2009). High-throughput sequencing of the zebrafish antibody repertoire. Science 324, 807–810.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lemberger, P., and Morel, M. (2012). Managing Complexity of Information Systems. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bellomo, N. (2013). Complex Systems and Society: Modeling and Simulation., eds. G. Ajmone Marsan and A. Tosin. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Goldberg, A. V., Kaplan, H., and Werneck, R. F. (2007). “Better Landmarks Within Reach,” in Experimental Algorithms: 6th International Workshop, WEA 2007, Rome, Italy, June 6-8, 2007. Proceedings, ed. C. Demetrescu (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 38–51.

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 Systems Neuroscience.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). Dr Henry Heimlich Uses His Heimlich Maneuver For First Time Aged 96. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/dr-henry-heimlich-uses-his-heimlich-manoeuvre-first-time-aged-96/ (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 (1982). The Federal Communications Commission’s International Telecommunications Activities. 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

Travis, M. J. (2008). The relationship between a connections math class and math Criterion Referenced Competency Test scores. Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix.

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

Walsh, M. W. (2010). S.&P. Says Cost to Care For Elderly Will Spiral. New York Times, B4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Gold and Shadlen, 2000; Smaglik, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Gold and Shadlen, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Weinstein et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Front. Syst. Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1662-5137
Scope	Neuroscience (miscellaneous) Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental Neuroscience