How to format your references using the Social Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Gardner, J. A. (2000). Ars longa, vita brevis. Nature, 408(6809), 143.
A journal article with 2 authors
Lum, L., & Beachy, P. A. (2004). The Hedgehog response network: sensors, switches, and routers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5678), 1755–1759.
A journal article with 3 authors
Haider, B., Häusser, M., & Carandini, M. (2013). Inhibition dominates sensory responses in the awake cortex. Nature, 493(7430), 97–100.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Pedersen, I. M., Cheng, G., Wieland, S., Volinia, S., Croce, C. M., Chisari, F. V., & David, M. (2007). Interferon modulation of cellular microRNAs as an antiviral mechanism. Nature, 449(7164), 919–922.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Savaux, V., & Louët, Y. (2014). MMSE-Based Algorithm for Joint Signal Detection, Channel and Noise Variance Estimation for OFDM Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Zhang, W., Yang, X., Xu, Z., An, P., Liu, Q., & Lu, Y. (Eds.). (2012). Advances on Digital Television and Wireless Multimedia Communications: 9th International Forum on Digital TV and Wireless Multimedia Communication, IFTC 2012, Shanghai, China, November 9-10, 2012. Proceedings (Vol. 331). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Bog, A., Sachs, K., Zeier, A., & Plattner, H. (2012). Normalization in a Mixed OLTP and OLAP Workload Scenario. In R. Nambiar & M. Poess (Eds.), Topics in Performance Evaluation, Measurement and Characterization: Third TPC Technology Conference, TPCTC 2011, Seattle, WA, USA, August 29-September 3, 2011, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 67–82). Springer.

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 Neuroscience.

Blog post
O`Callaghan, J. (2015, July 20). Arctic Sea Ice Had A Massive 41% Increase In Summer 2013, But Overall It’s Still Shrinking. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/arctic-sea-ice-had-massive-41-increase-summer-2013-overall-trends-are-still-down/

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. (1999). Aviation Competition: Information on the Department of Transportation’s Proposed Policy (RCED-99-225). 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
Caballero Suarez, O. L. (2008). Effects of ion correlations in high density plasmas: Neutrino scattering and transport properties in supernovae and neutron star crusts [Doctoral dissertation]. Indiana 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
Hodara, S. (2016, January 24). Where Warhol and Chagall Adorn the Walls. New York Times, WE10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gardner, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Gardner, 2000; Lum & Beachy, 2004).

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

  • Two authors: (Lum & Beachy, 2004)
  • Three authors: (Haider et al., 2013)
  • 6 or more authors: (Pedersen et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal titleSocial Neuroscience
AbbreviationSoc. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)1747-0919
ISSN (online)1747-0927
ScopeBehavioral Neuroscience
Social Psychology
Development

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