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

McKee, C. F. (2011). Astronomy. Let there be dust. Science 333, 1227–1228.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rubin, A. F., and Green, P. (2007). Comment on “The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers.” Science 317, 1500.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pendry, J. B., Luo, Y., and Zhao, R. (2015). Transforming the optical landscape. Science 348, 521–524.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Reed, T. E., Daunt, F., Hall, M. E., Phillips, R. A., Wanless, S., and Cunningham, E. J. A. (2008). Parasite treatment affects maternal investment in sons. Science 321, 1681–1682.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Böhmer, E. (2015). Dentistry in Rabbits and Rodents. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Atamturktur, H. S., Moaveni, B., Papadimitriou, C., and Schoenherr, T. eds. (2014). Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification, Volume 3: Proceedings of the 32nd IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, 2014. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Smeele, F. (2009). “International Civil Litigation and the Pollution of the Marine Environment,” in The Hamburg Lectures on Maritime Affairs 2007 & 2008 Hamburg Studies on Maritime Affairs., eds. J. Basedow, U. Magnus, and R. Wolfrum (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 77–118.

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). Common Pesticide Damages Bee Brains And Affects Colony Performance. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/common-pesticide-damages-bee-brains-and-affects-colony-performance/ [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 (1976). Selected Literature on Cost Accounting and Cost Control for Automatic Data Processing. 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

Adaligil, E. (2010). Electron transfer through self-assembled monolayers of alkaneselenols and alkanethiols on mercury electrode.

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

Seymour, M. (2015). How About a Nightcap? New York Times, BR11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McKee, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Rubin and Green, 2007; McKee, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Rubin and Green, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Reed et al., 2008)

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)