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

Wake, D. B. (2012). Ecology. Facing extinction in real time. Science 335, 1052–1053.

A journal article with 2 authors

McNiven, M. A., and Thompson, H. M. (2006). Vesicle formation at the plasma membrane and trans-Golgi network: the same but different. Science 313, 1591–1594.

A journal article with 3 authors

Siegel, M., Buschman, T. J., and Miller, E. K. (2015). Cortical information flow during flexible sensorimotor decisions. Science 348, 1352–1355.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bisazza, A., Butterworth, B., Piffer, L., Bahrami, B., Miletto Petrazzini, M. E., and Agrillo, C. (2014). Collective enhancement of numerical acuity by meritocratic leadership in fish. Sci. Rep. 4, 4560.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vitale, J. (2007). The Seven Lost Secrets of Success. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bocarsly, A., and Mingos, D. M. P. eds. (2011). Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Storage. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Meyer, F. (2013). “Flooding Edge Weighted Graphs,” in Graph-Based Representations in Pattern Recognition: 9th IAPR-TC-15 International Workshop, GbRPR 2013, Vienna, Austria, May 15-17, 2013. Proceedings, eds. W. G. Kropatsch, N. M. Artner, Y. Haxhimusa, and X. Jiang (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 31–40.

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

Hamilton, K. (2015). Why You Should Never Squash A Spider. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mother-wolf-spider-squashed-hundreds-babies-scatter/ (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). Federal Internal Control and Financial Management Systems: Major Reform Efforts Are 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

Duffy, B. (2012). Analytical Methods and Perturbation Theory for the Elliptic Restricted Three-Body Problem of Astrodynamics. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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

Grynbaum, M. M. (2017). Inaugural All Its Own Brings Astonishment and Awe to Television. New York Times, A22.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wake, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (McNiven and Thompson, 2006; Wake, 2012).

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

Two authors: (McNiven and Thompson, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Bisazza et al., 2014)

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