How to format your references using the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN). 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	Download the output style file
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

Delaney, P. (2000). Palaeoceanography. Nutrients in the glacial balance. Nature, 405, 288–89, 291

A journal article with 2 authors

Keefer, D.K., Larsen, M.C. (2007). Geology. Assessing landslide hazards. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316, 1136–38

A journal article with 3 authors

Goldman, S.R., Ebright, R.H., Nickels, B.E. (2009). Direct detection of abortive RNA transcripts in vivo. Science (New York, N.Y.), 324, 927–28

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Busino, L., Donzelli, M., Chiesa, M., et al. (2003). Degradation of Cdc25A by beta-TrCP during S phase and in response to DNA damage. Nature, 426, 87–91

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zecchina, A., Califano, S. (2017). The Development of Catalysis. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Mahmoudi, M. ed. (2009). Challenging Cases in Allergy and Immunology. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Eaton, G.R., Eaton, S.S., Barr, D.P., et al. (2010). A More in Depth Look at the EPR Signal Response. In: S. S. Eaton, D. P. Barr, R. T. Weber (eds). Quantitative EPR: A Practitioners Guide. Vienna: Springer, p. 37–61.

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 Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). An extra second on the clock: why moving from astronomic to atomic time is a tricky business. IFLScience [online]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/extra-second-clock-why-moving-astronomic-atomic-time-tricky-business/ [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 (1996). Intercollegiate Athletics: Status of Efforts to Promote Gender Equity. 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

Jackson, M.A. (2015). An action research study of collaborative relationhips between psychotherapists and medical doctors. Doctoral dissertation. Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017). Sea Dogs, G.I.s and Ballet Divas. New York Times, AR43

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Delaney, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Delaney, 2000; Keefer and Larsen, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Keefer and Larsen, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Busino et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	1749-5016
ISSN (online)	1749-5024
Scope	General Medicine Cognitive Neuroscience Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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