How to format your references using the Cognition citation style

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

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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Laloë, F. (2003). Obituary: Jean Brossel (1918-2003). Nature, 422(6929), 274.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kleinberg, J., & Lawrence, S. (2001). Network analysis. The structure of the Web. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5548), 1849–1850.

A journal article with 3 authors

Finlay, J. C., Small, G. E., & Sterner, R. W. (2013). Human influences on nitrogen removal in lakes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 342(6155), 247–250.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Müller, C. D., Falcou, A., Reckefuss, N., Rojahn, M., Wiederhirn, V., Rudati, P., Frohne, H., Nuyken, O., Becker, H., & Meerholz, K. (2003). Multi-colour organic light-emitting displays by solution processing. Nature, 421(6925), 829–833.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lee, K. B. (2011). Principles of Microelectromechanical Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Öztürk, M., Waisel, Y., Khan, M. A., & Görk, G. (Eds.). (2006). Biosaline Agriculture and Salinity Tolerance in Plants. Birkhäuser.

A chapter in an edited book

Monory, K., & Lutz, B. (2009). Genetic Models of the Endocannabinoid System. In D. Kendall & S. Alexander (Eds.), Behavioral Neurobiology of the Endocannabinoid System (pp. 111–139). 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 Cognition.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015, March 11). How Do Chameleons Change The Color Of Their Skin? IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/change-colors-chameleons-rearrange-nanocrystals-their-skin/

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. (1974). Telling America’s Story to the World--Problems and Issues (B-118654). 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

Slayton, K. A. (2013). A psychoeducational support group for families of youth experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia: A grant proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Kelly, D. (1993, June 20). CHILDREN’S BOOKS. New York Times, 723.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Laloë, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kleinberg & Lawrence, 2001; Laloë, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Kleinberg & Lawrence, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Müller et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Cognition
Abbreviation	Cognition
ISSN (print)	0010-0277
Scope	Language and Linguistics Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental and Educational Psychology Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Linguistics and Language