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

Rohn, J. (2010). Women scientists must speak out. Nature 468, 733.

A journal article with 2 authors

Evans, J. A., and Foster, J. G. (2011). Metaknowledge. Science 331, 721–725.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yi, J. S., Du, M., and Zajac, A. J. (2009). A vital role for interleukin-21 in the control of a chronic viral infection. Science 324, 1572–1576.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wu, J. Y., Feng, L., Park, H. T., Havlioglu, N., Wen, L., Tang, H., et al. (2001). The neuronal repellent Slit inhibits leukocyte chemotaxis induced by chemotactic factors. Nature 410, 948–952.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hetherington, S. (2011). How to Know. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Jalabert, A. (2008). Molecular Electronics Materials, Devices and Applications. , eds. A. Amara and F. Clermidy Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Roushdy, H. M. (2011). “Higher Risk of Health Problems for Radio-Contaminated Food Consumption by Human Population Suffering Protein-Calorie Malnutrition and Environmental Chemical Pollution,” in Advances in Food Protection: Focus on Food Safety and Defense NATO Science for Peace and Security Series A: Chemistry and Biology., ed. M. Hefnawy (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 57–72.

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, E. (2015). Curing Baldness May Just Be About Having Enough Pluck. 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 (1970). Use of Consultants by NASA. 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

Zhao, X. (2006). Exfoliation Corrosion Kinetics of High Strength Aluminum Alloys.

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

Gorman, J. (2016). When Tickled, Rats Giggle and Leap, Researchers Find. New York Times, A12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rohn, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Rohn, 2010; Evans and Foster, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Evans and Foster, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Wu et al., 2001)

About the journal

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

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