How to format your references using the Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Cohen, J. (2002). The immunopathogenesis of sepsis. Nature 420, 885–891.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brisson, J. A., and Nuzhdin, S. V. (2008). Rarity of males in pea aphids results in mutational decay. Science 319, 58.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tingley, M. W., Estes, L. D., and Wilcove, D. S. (2013). Ecosystems: climate change must not blow conservation off course. Nature 500, 271–272.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Snijder, B., Sacher, R., Rämö, P., Damm, E.-M., Liberali, P., and Pelkmans, L. (2009). Population context determines cell-to-cell variability in endocytosis and virus infection. Nature 461, 520–523.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pohanish, R. P., and Greene, S. A. (2005). Wiley Guide to Chemical Incompatibilities. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Navab, N., Hornegger, J., Wells, W. M., and Frangi, A. eds. (2015). Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention -- MICCAI 2015: 18th International Conference, Munich, Germany, October 5-9, 2015, Proceedings, Part I. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Buscarini, E., and Manfredi, G. (2012). “Percutaneous Ultrasound Guided Interventional Procedures in Pancreatic Diseases,” in Ultrasonography of the Pancreas: Imaging and Pathologic Correlations, ed. M. D’Onofrio (Milano: Springer), 47–53.

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 Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016). Just For You: How To Create Sounds That Only You Can Hear In A Venue. IFLScience.

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 (2007). Digital Television Transition: Increased Federal Planning and Risk Management Could Further Facilitate the DTV Transition. 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

Wright, M. W. (2017). The Louisiana Teacher Assault Pay Statute: An Analysis of Court Decisions Interpreting the Statute and a Comparative Study of Teacher Assault Pay Statutes in Other States.

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

Schwartz, J. (2016). Fatal Blows: Kind to the Planet, Not to Bats. New York Times, D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cohen, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Cohen, 2002; Brisson and Nuzhdin, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Brisson and Nuzhdin, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Snijder et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
Abbreviation	Front. Astron. Space Sci.
ISSN (online)	2296-987X
Scope