How to format your references using the Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. 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

Bray, D. (2001). Reasoning for results. Nature 412, 863.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pascual, A., and Préat, T. (2001). Localization of long-term memory within the Drosophila mushroom body. Science 294, 1115–1117.

A journal article with 3 authors

Montoya, J. M., Pimm, S. L., and Solé, R. V. (2006). Ecological networks and their fragility. Nature 442, 259–264.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Cheng, M., Xie, W., Zong, B., Sun, B., and Qiao, M. (2013). When magnetic catalyst meets magnetic reactor: etherification of FCC light gasoline as an example. Sci. Rep. 3, 1973.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smith, J. D. H., and Romanowska, A. B. (1999). Post-Modern Algebra. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Jansen, P. G. W., and Roodt, G. eds. (2015). Conceptualising and Measuring Work Identity: South-African Perspectives and Findings. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhu, M., and Xu, X. (2012). “A Kind of Mathematic Model of the Porous Gas Diffusion Electrode,” in Future Communication, Computing, Control and Management: Volume 2, ed. Y. Zhang (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 23–27.

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 Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015). Panda Twins Born At Toronto Zoo. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/panda-twins-are-born-toronto-zoo/ (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 (2009). Commercial Space Transportation: Development of the Commercial Space Launch Industry Presents Safety Oversight Challenges for FAA and Raises Issues Affecting Federal Roles. 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

Ponti, C. M. (2010). The musical representation of Asian characters in the musicals of Richard Rodgers. 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

Kelly, M. (1993). The New White House Refrain: Please Hang Up and Dial Again. New York Times, A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bray, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Bray, 2001; Pascual and Préat, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Pascual and Préat, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Cheng et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
ISSN (online)	2296-4185
Scope	Biotechnology Bioengineering Biomedical Engineering Histology