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. A Lawler. LIVING WITH A STAR: Controversy Flares Up Over NASA Solar Project. Science 289, 528–530 (2000)

A journal article with 2 authors

1. R Sennett; M Rendl. Developmental biology. A scar is born: origins of fibrotic skin tissue. Science 348, 284–285 (2015)

A journal article with 3 authors

1. M Saitou; SC Barton; MA Surani. A molecular programme for the specification of germ cell fate in mice. Nature 418, 293–300 (2002)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1. S Saxena; RP Chaudhary; A Singh; S Awasthi; S Shukla. Plasmonic micro lens for extraordinary transmission of broadband light. Sci Rep 4, 5586 (2014)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. N-E Choi; JH Han. How Flavor Works. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2015)

An edited book

1. Eds: LMV de Carvalho; C Jones. The Monsoons and Climate Change: Observations and Modeling. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2016)

A chapter in an edited book

1. L-S Gan; FW Lee; N Nagaraja; P Li; J Labutti; W Yin; C Xia; H Yang; V Uttamsingh; C Lu; S Pusalkar; J Scott Daniels; R Huang; M Qian; J-T Wu; K Cardoza; SK Balani; GT Miwa. Case History — Use of ADME Studies for Optimization of Drug Candidates. In: Optimizing the “Drug-Like” Properties of Leads in Drug Discovery. RT Borchardt, EH Kerns, MJ Hageman, DR Thakker, JL Stevens, eds. , Springer, New York, NY (2006)

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. T Hale. Rosetta Watches A Rare Outburst From Comet 67P, https://www.iflscience.com/space/rosetta-watches-a-rare-outburst-from-comet-67p/

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. Digests of Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States, Vol. II, No. 4. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1991)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. TA Denz. Performance Evaluation of a Magnetically Enhanced Micro-Cathode Vacuum Arc Thruster, (2012)

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. B Brantley. Regrets? She Has a Big One, (2016)

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