How to format your references using the Frontiers in B Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in B Cell Biology. 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

Smaglik, P. (2003). Visions of Europe’s future. Nature 421, 557.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peacock, T., and Bradley, E. (2008). Applied physics. Going with (or against) the flow. Science 320, 1302–1303.

A journal article with 3 authors

Costello, M. J., May, R. M., and Stork, N. E. (2013). Can we name Earth’s species before they go extinct? Science 339, 413–416.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Deslys, J. P., Comoy, E., Hawkins, S., Simon, S., Schimmel, H., Wells, G., et al. (2001). Screening slaughtered cattle for BSE. Nature 409, 476–478.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Good, P. I., and Hardin, J. W. (2006). Common Errors in Statistics (and How to Avoid Them). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ishibashi, J.-I., Okino, K., and Sunamura, M. eds. (2015). Subseafloor Biosphere Linked to Hydrothermal Systems: TAIGA Concept. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

A chapter in an edited book

Guo, W., Labrosse, G., and Narayanan, R. (2012). “Steady Two-Dimensional (2D) Heat Conduction Problems,” in The Application of the Chebyshev-Spectral Method in Transport Phenomena, eds. G. Labrosse and R. Narayanan (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 75–111.

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 B Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016). Alzheimer’s Breakthrough? Have We Nearly Cured Dementia? Not Just Yet…. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/alzheimers-breakthrough-have-we-nearly-cured-dementia-not-just-yet/ (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 (1990). Financial Problems in the Stafford Student Loan 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

Trantham, L. C. (2012). PSA surveillance following radical prostatectomy: What we know and why it matters. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina.

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

Vecsey, G. (2010). Super Bowl Champion Jets Ignited A Sporting Revival in the Big Town. New York Times, SP3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik, 2003; Peacock and Bradley, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Peacock and Bradley, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Deslys et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in B Cell Biology
Abbreviation	Front. Immunol.
ISSN (online)	1664-3224
Scope