How to format your references using the Visual Cognition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Visual Cognition. 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
Bohman, T. (2009). Mathematics. Emergence of connectivity in networks. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5920), 1438–1439.
A journal article with 2 authors
Nijhout, H. F., & Grunert, L. W. (2010). The cellular and physiological mechanism of wing-body scaling in Manduca sexta. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6011), 1693–1695.
A journal article with 3 authors
Jackson, D. E., Holcombe, M., & Ratnieks, F. L. W. (2004). Trail geometry gives polarity to ant foraging networks. Nature, 432(7019), 907–909.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Treusch, S., Hamamichi, S., Goodman, J. L., Matlack, K. E. S., Chung, C. Y., Baru, V., Shulman, J. M., Parrado, A., Bevis, B. J., Valastyan, J. S., Han, H., Lindhagen-Persson, M., Reiman, E. M., Evans, D. A., Bennett, D. A., Olofsson, A., DeJager, P. L., Tanzi, R. E., Caldwell, K. A., … Lindquist, S. (2011). Functional links between Aβ toxicity, endocytic trafficking, and Alzheimer’s disease risk factors in yeast. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6060), 1241–1245.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Rodman, G. B. (2014). Why Cultural Studies? John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Amidror, I. (Ed.). (2009). The Theory of the Moiré Phenomenon: Volume I: Periodic Layers (Second Edition, Vol. 38). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Zhang, D., Su, Z., Qi, K., Xin, G., & Wei, P. (2015). RPECA-Rumor Propagation Based Eventual Consistency Assessment Algorithm. In Y. Chen, P. Ienne, & Q. Ji (Eds.), Advanced Parallel Processing Technologies: 11th International Symposium, APPT 2015, Jinan, China, August 20-21, 2015, Proceedings (pp. 60–72). Springer International Publishing.

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 Visual Cognition.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2015, April 23). First Extrasolar Reflected Starlight Detected. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/first-extrasolar-reflected-starlight-detected/

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). Managing Host Country Contracting Activities (ID-82-42). 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
Quick, T. D. (2012). Faith-based charter school success at education ground zero [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine 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
Meyer, J. A., & Meyer, L. R. (2007, October 28). Abolish Parole. New York Times, 14CT15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bohman, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Bohman, 2009; Nijhout & Grunert, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Nijhout & Grunert, 2010)
  • Three authors: (Jackson et al., 2004)
  • 6 or more authors: (Treusch et al., 2011)

About the journal

Full journal titleVisual Cognition
AbbreviationVis. cogn.
ISSN (print)1350-6285
ISSN (online)1464-0716
ScopeArts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Cognitive Neuroscience
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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