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

Grayson, M. (2012). Ageing. Nature 492, S1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tao, F. F., and Salmeron, M. (2011). In situ studies of chemistry and structure of materials in reactive environments. Science 331, 171–174.

A journal article with 3 authors

Snellen, I. A. G., de Mooij, E. J. W., and Albrecht, S. (2009). The changing phases of extrasolar planet CoRoT-1b. Nature 459, 543–545.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Buxton, J. L., Suderman, M., Pappas, J. J., Borghol, N., McArdle, W., Blakemore, A. I. F., et al. (2014). Human leukocyte telomere length is associated with DNA methylation levels in multiple subtelomeric and imprinted loci. Sci. Rep. 4, 4954.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Walker, C., and Fincham, B. (2011). Work and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Onishi, Y., Voitsekhovich, O. V., and Zheleznyak, M. J. eds. (2007). Chernobyl – What Have We Learned?: The Successes and Failures to Mitigate Water Contamination over 20 Years. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Adámek, J. (2005). “Algebra ∩ Coalgebra = Presheaves,” in Algebra and Coalgebra in Computer Science: First International Conference, CALCO 2005, Swansea, UK, September 3-6, 2005. Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science., eds. J. L. Fiadeiro, N. Harman, M. Roggenbach, and J. Rutten (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 67–82.

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

Hamilton, K. (2016). Microbes: Our Tiny, Crucial Allies. 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 (2003). Rail Safety and Security: Some Actions Already Taken to Enhance Rail Security, but Risk-based Plan Needed. 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

Jernigan, M. B. (2013). Use of uprooted invasive buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare ) parent plants as thatch to reduce progeny seedling emergence.

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

Shpigel, B. (2017). Finalists Take Similar Routs. New York Times, D1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Grayson, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Tao and Salmeron, 2011; Grayson, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Tao and Salmeron, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Buxton et al., 2014)

About the journal

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

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