How to format your references using the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN). 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

Moro-Martín, A. (2012). Spanish changes are scientific suicide. Nature, 482, 277

A journal article with 2 authors

Becker, A., Grünewald, U. (2003). Disaster management. Flood risk in Central Europe. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300, 1099

A journal article with 3 authors

Hammarström, P., Schneider, F., Kelly, J.W. (2001). Trans-suppression of misfolding in an amyloid disease. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293, 2459–62

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yoshimura, M., Ono, M., Watanabe, H., et al. (2014). Feasibility of amylin imaging in pancreatic islets with β-amyloid imaging probes. Scientific reports, 4, 6155

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ruehli, A.E., Antonini, G., Jiang, L. (2017). Circuit Oriented Electromagnetic Modeling Using the Peec Techniques. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Larrosa, J., O’Sullivan, B. eds. (2011). Recent Advances in Constraints: 14th Annual ERCIM International Workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming, CSCLP 2009, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-17, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Martinez, Y.R., Rodriguez, H.B., Lozano, D.O., et al. (2009). Magnetic and structural properties of mechanically alloyed Tb0.257−x Nd x Fe0.743 alloys, with x = 0 and 0.257. In: C. Larica, R. C. Mercader, C. Partiti, et al. (eds). LACAME 2006: Proceedings of the 10th Latin American Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (LACAME 2006) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 5–9 November 2006. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, p. 29–34.

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 Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Cow Virus Now A Risk Factor For Breast Cancer. IFLScience [online]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/cow-virus-now-risk-factor-breast-cancer/ [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 (2008). Highway Safety: Foresight Issues Challenge DOT’s Efforts to Assess and Respond to New Technology-Based Trends. 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

Bankapura, S. (2016). Packet adaptive routing in communication network. Doctoral dissertation. Long Beach, CA: 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

Eligon, J., Alcindor, Y., Armendariz, A. (2017). Tax Credits to House Poor Reinforce Racial Divisions. New York Times, A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Moro-Martín, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Becker and Grünewald, 2003; Moro-Martín, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Becker and Grünewald, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Yoshimura et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	1749-5016
ISSN (online)	1749-5024
Scope	General Medicine Cognitive Neuroscience Experimental and Cognitive Psychology