How to format your references using the Frontiers in Bioscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Bioscience (FBS). 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	Download the output style file
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

1. R Nusse. Cell signalling: Disarming Wnt. Nature 519, 163–164 (2015)

A journal article with 2 authors

1. D Castanotto; JJ Rossi. The promises and pitfalls of RNA-interference-based therapeutics. Nature 457, 426–433 (2009)

A journal article with 3 authors

1. E Blackstone; M Morrison; MB Roth. H2S induces a suspended animation-like state in mice. Science 308, 518 (2005)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1. JK Gansel; M Thiel; MS Rill; M Decker; K Bade; V Saile; G von Freymann; S Linden; M Wegener. Gold helix photonic metamaterial as broadband circular polarizer. Science 325, 1513–1515 (2009)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. A Sizer; C Balachandar; N Biswas; R Foon; A Griffiths; S Hodgett; B Sahu; M Underwood. Part 2 MRCOG: Single Best Answer Questions. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2016)

An edited book

1. Ed: K Großmann. Thermo-energetic Design of Machine Tools: A Systemic Approach to Solve the Conflict Between Power Efficiency, Accuracy and Productivity Demonstrated at the Example of Machining Production. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2015)

A chapter in an edited book

1. L Hagoel; D Kalekin-Fishman. Point of Departure. In: From the Margins to New Ground: An Autoethnography of Passage between Disciplines. D Kalekin-Fishman, ed. , SensePublishers, Rotterdam (2016)

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 Bioscience.

Blog post

1. J Fang. 10,000 Years of Bones Reveal How Climate Affected Bunny Booms in the Past, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/10000-years-bones-reveal-how-climate-affected-bunny-booms-past/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Commercial Aviation: Despite Industry Turmoil, Low-Cost Airlines Are Growing and Profitable. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2004)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Q Al azze. Field-Oriented Control of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors Based on DSP Controller, (2014)

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

1. MJ de la MERCED. Digital Security Provider Raises $100 Million to Tackle Booming Market, (2017)

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1, 2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Bioscience
ISSN (print)	1945-0494
ISSN (online)	1945-0508
Scope