It remains urgent to make continuous efforts on well-designed and highly active non precious metal (NPM) electrocatalysts for the cathodic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), thus helping greatly reduce the fuel cell cost. Due to an unsatisfied stability caused by Fenton reaction for Fe-based materials, Co based materials bear much more expectations as one type of NPM electrocatalysts to be applied in the ORR. Here we report a novel strategy to synthesize a series of mesoporous nitrogen-doped carbon-supported cobalt electrocatalysts (Co-DCD-CA), which takes full advantage of electrostatic interaction between carboxyl in citric acid (CA) and amidogen in dicyandiamide (DCD) as well as chelating interaction between citric acid and cobalt cation. When CA is employed as carbon source, the optimal derivative of the Co-DCD-2-CA-900 electrocatalyst exhibits a higher ORR activity with a half-wave potential at 0.75 V, which is 60 mV higher than that prepared using Ketjenblack EC 300 J (Co-DCD-2-EC-900) as the carbon support. Besides, the effects of pyrolysis temperature as well as DCD to CA ratio on the ORR activity are detailedly investigated. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.