How to format your references using the Frontiers in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Bioinformatics and Computational 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

Nield, T. (2008). A tribe of jobbing ditchers. Nature 451, 258–260.

A journal article with 2 authors

Blunier, T., and Brook, E. J. (2001). Timing of millennial-scale climate change in Antarctica and Greenland during the last glacial period. Science 291, 109–112.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bradley, R. S., Hughes, M. K., and Diaz, H. F. (2003). Climate change. Climate in Medieval time. Science 302, 404–405.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sun, X., Kaur, J., Milojević, S., Flammini, A., and Menczer, F. (2013). Social dynamics of science. Sci. Rep. 3, 1069.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Simon, M. K., Lee, D., Martin, W. L., Tsou, H., and Yan, T.-Y. (2005). Bandwidth-Efficient Digital Modulation with Application to Deep Space Communications. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Mc Kee, A., and Eraut, M. eds. (2012). Learning Trajectories, Innovation and Identity for Professional Development. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Ham, M., and Agha, G. (2008). “A Study of Coordinated Dynamic Market-Based Task Assignment in Massively Multi-Agent Systems,” in Massively Multi-Agent Technology: AAMAS Workshops, MMAS 2006, LSMAS 2006, and CCMMS 2007 Hakodate, Japan, May 9, 2006 Honolulu, HI, USA, May 15, 2007 Selected and Revised Papers, eds. N. Jamali, P. Scerri, and T. Sugawara (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 43–63.

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 Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Children With Prosthetics Could Soon Be Creating Their Own Lego Attachments. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/children-prosthetics-could-soon-be-creating-their-own-lego-attachments/ (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 (2014). Broadband Internet: FCC Should Track the Application of Fixed Internet Usage-Based Pricing and Help Improve Consumer Education. 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

Gu, J. (2010). Measurement, modeling, and synthesis of time-varying appearance of natural phenomena. New York, NY: Columbia 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

Vecsey, G. (2011). College Athletes Move Concussions Into the Courtroom. New York Times, B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nield, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Blunier and Brook, 2001; Nield, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Blunier and Brook, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Sun et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Abbreviation	Front. Genet.
ISSN (online)	1664-8021
Scope	Genetics Molecular Medicine Genetics(clinical)