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

Forró, L. (2000). NANOTECHNOLOGY: Beyond Gedanken Experiments. Science 289, 560–561.

A journal article with 2 authors

Norton, D. A., and Didham, R. K. (2007). Comment on “Why are there so many species of herbivorous insects in tropical rainforests?” Science 315, 1666; author reply 1666.

A journal article with 3 authors

Aurelio, O., Hall, D. H., and Hobert, O. (2002). Immunoglobulin-domain proteins required for maintenance of ventral nerve cord organization. Science 295, 686–690.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hubler, Z., Allimuthu, D., Bederman, I., Elitt, M. S., Madhavan, M., Allan, K. C., et al. (2018). Accumulation of 8,9-unsaturated sterols drives oligodendrocyte formation and remyelination. Nature 560, 372–376.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Budisa, N. (2005). Engineering the Genetic Code. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Meheus, J., and Nickles, T. eds. (2009). Models of Discovery and Creativity. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, Y., and Wang, J. (2012). “Finite Precision Extended Alternating Projection Neural Network (FPEAP),” in Bio-Inspired Computing and Applications: 7th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2011, Zhengzhou,China, August 11-14. 2011, Revised Selected Papers, eds. D.-S. Huang, Y. Gan, P. Premaratne, and K. Han (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 20–25.

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. (2013). 2.7 billion-year old fossilised raindrops. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/27-billion-year-old-fossilised-raindrops/ (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 (2011). Statutory Copyright Licensing: Implications of a Phaseout on Access to Television Programming and Consumer Prices Are Unclear. 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

Gonzales, M. (2017). Examining institutional career preparation: Student perceptions of their workplace readiness and the role of the university in student career development. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine 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

Sisario, B. (2017). Sprint Throws a Cash Lifeline to Struggling Tidal. New York Times, B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Forró, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Forró, 2000; Norton and Didham, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Norton and Didham, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Hubler et al., 2018)

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)