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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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. N Loder. UK space strategy slammed as lacking funds and vision. Nature 406, 222 (2000)

A journal article with 2 authors

1. MD Jennings; GD Pavitt. eIF5 has GDI activity necessary for translational control by eIF2 phosphorylation. Nature 465, 378–381 (2010)

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Q Ye; RM Krug; YJ Tao. The mechanism by which influenza A virus nucleoprotein forms oligomers and binds RNA. Nature 444, 1078–1082 (2006)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1. S-Y Xie; F Gao; X Lu; R-B Huang; C-R Wang; X Zhang; M-L Liu; S-L Deng; L-S Zheng. Capturing the labile fullerene[50] as C50Cl10. Science 304, 699 (2004)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. M Burgess. Analytical Network and System Administration. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2005)

An edited book

1. X Wang. Traceback and Anonymity. Springer, New York, NY (2015)

A chapter in an edited book

1. PI Azócar Fernández; MF Buchroithner. Critical Cartography in the Context of Post-Modernism. In: Paradigms in Cartography: An Epistemological Review of the 20th and 21st Centuries. MF Buchroithner, ed. , Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2014)

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. E Andrew. Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse: Live Webcast, https://www.iflscience.com/space/ring-fire-solar-eclipse-live-webcast/

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. GAO Reviews of USDA Biotechnology Research Efforts and Regulatory Programs and Activities. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1986)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. A Sanabria. Root Metaphor, (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. M Mazzetti; A Goldman; MS Schmidt. Under Trump, Shell of a Force In Syria Swiftly Lost C.I.A. Aid, (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