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

Rose, K. D. (2001). Evolution. The ancestry of whales. Science 293, 2216–2217.

A journal article with 2 authors

Allsop, D. J., and West, S. A. (2003). Life history: changing sex at the same relative body size. Nature 425, 783–784.

A journal article with 3 authors

Berkhout, B., Das, A. T., and Beerens, N. (2001). HIV-1 RNA editing, hypermutation, and error-prone reverse transcription. Science 292, 7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Vaquero, A., Scher, M., Erdjument-Bromage, H., Tempst, P., Serrano, L., and Reinberg, D. (2007). SIRT1 regulates the histone methyl-transferase SUV39H1 during heterochromatin formation. Nature 450, 440–444.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gray, D. R. J. M., and Al-Ani, D. M. Z. (2011). Temporomandibular Disorders. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Sycara, K., Gelfand, M., and Abbe, A. eds. (2013). Models for Intercultural Collaboration and Negotiation. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Boavida, N. (2016). “The Use and Influence of Indicators in Decisions About Technological Innovation,” in Scientific Knowledge and the Transgression of Boundaries, eds. B.-J. Krings, H. Rodríguez, and A. Schleisiek (Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden), 59–99.

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

Evans, K. (2017). $20,000 Reward For 350 Endangered Salamanders “Missing” From Center. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/20000-dollar-reward-for-350-endangered-salamanders-missing-from-center/ (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 (2006). Air Traffic Control Modernization: Status of the Current Program and Planning for the Next Generation Air Transportation System. 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

Mowery, K. (2015). Beneath the Attack Surface. La Jolla, CA: University of California San Diego.

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

Pilon, M. (2013). Looking Good, Shooting Ugly. New York Times, B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rose, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Rose, 2001; Allsop and West, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Allsop and West, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Vaquero et al., 2007)

About the journal

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