How to format your references using the Frontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine. 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 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

Binns, W. R. (2011). Astronomy. Cosmic-ray origins. Science 334, 1071–1072.

A journal article with 2 authors

Macquaker, J. H. S., and Bohacs, K. M. (2007). Geology. On the accumulation of mud. Science 318, 1734–1735.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hauf, S., Waizenegger, I. C., and Peters, J. M. (2001). Cohesin cleavage by separase required for anaphase and cytokinesis in human cells. Science 293, 1320–1323.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yamashita, A., Singh, S. K., Kawate, T., Jin, Y., and Gouaux, E. (2005). Crystal structure of a bacterial homologue of Na+/Cl--dependent neurotransmitter transporters. Nature 437, 215–223.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wuestenberg, K. (2012). Clinical Small Animal Care. Ames, Iowa, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ikeuchi, K. ed. (2014). Computer Vision: A Reference Guide. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Xiao, G., and Yan, L. (2016). “Liver Fibrosis and Its Assessment,” in Operative Techniques in Liver Resection, ed. L. Yan (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 43–52.

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 Spinal Cord Medicine.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015). Why Are Humans So Afraid Of Spiders? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/our-fear-spiders-innate-not-learned/ (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). Airport Improvement Program: State Block Grant Pilot Program Is a Success. 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

Ackerman, G. L. (2009). Information technology in the K–12 classroom: Curriculum and instruction reflecting emerging capacity and paradigms. Scottsdale, AZ: Northcentral 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

Williams, J. (2016). Disappearing Act: The Art and Fraud of Faking Your Own Death. New York Times, C4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Binns, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Macquaker and Bohacs, 2007; Binns, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Macquaker and Bohacs, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Yamashita et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Spinal Cord Medicine
Abbreviation	Front. Neurol.
ISSN (online)	1664-2295
Scope	Clinical Neurology Neurology