How to format your references using the Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience citation style

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

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

Pernet, B. (2004). The cryptic filtering house of an invertebrate larva. Science 306, 1757.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sugita, Y., and Suzuki, Y. (2003). Audiovisual perception: Implicit estimation of sound-arrival time. Nature 421, 911.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sharp, D. J., Rogers, G. C., and Scholey, J. M. (2000). Microtubule motors in mitosis. Nature 407, 41–47.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wilbanks, A. M., Fralish, G. B., Kirby, M. L., Barak, L. S., Li, Y.-X., and Caron, M. G. (2004). Beta-arrestin 2 regulates zebrafish development through the hedgehog signaling pathway. Science 306, 2264–2267.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alberty, R. A. (2006). Biochemical Thermodynamics: Applications of Mathmatica. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Giese, K. P., and Radwanska, K. eds. (2016). Novel Mechanisms of Memory. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Layer, E., and Tomczyk, K. (2010). “Mapping Error,” in Measurements, Modelling and Simulation of Dynamic Systems, ed. K. Tomczyk (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 127–150.

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 Systems Neuroscience.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014). How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need/ (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 (1997). Surface Transportation: The Department of Transportation Proposes Significant Changes to Its Automated Highway System Program. 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

Kehoe, M. I. (2008). Tobacco control: A qualitative assessment of the perceptions and practices of nurse practitioners. Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2006). Justices to Expand Review of “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban. New York Times, A14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pernet, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Sugita and Suzuki, 2003; Pernet, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Sugita and Suzuki, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Wilbanks et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Front. Syst. Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1662-5137
Scope	Neuroscience (miscellaneous) Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental Neuroscience