How to format your references using the Frontiers in Cancer Genetics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Cancer Genetics. 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

van Deursen, J. M. (2014). The role of senescent cells in ageing. Nature 509, 439–446.

A journal article with 2 authors

Saunders, L. R., and Verdin, E. (2009). Cell biology. Stress response and aging. Science 323, 1021–1022.

A journal article with 3 authors

Parens, E., Johnston, J., and Moses, J. (2008). Ethics. Do we need “synthetic bioethics”? Science 321, 1449.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yang, Z., Han, S., Keller, M., Kaiser, A., Bender, B. J., Bosse, M., et al. (2018). Structural basis of ligand binding modes at the neuropeptide Y Y1 receptor. Nature 556, 520–524.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Davino, C., Furno, M., and Vistocco, D. (2014). Quantile Regression: Theory and Applications. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Irvin-Erickson, D., and Phan, P. C. eds. (2016). Violence, Religion, Peacemaking. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US.

A chapter in an edited book

Nandi, S., and Ganguly, N. (2015). “Resource Constrained Randomized Coverage Strategies for Unstructured Networks,” in Propagation Phenomena in Real World Networks, eds. D. Król, D. Fay, and B. Gabryś (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 107–134.

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 Cancer Genetics.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). Explore Five US National Parks In These 360° Interactive Guided Tours. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/explore-five-us-national-parks-in-these-360-interactive-guided-tours/ (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 (2008). Transportation Security: Transportation Worker Identification Credential: A Status Update. 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

Li, X. (2008). Two essays on “mining market basket data: Models and applications in marketing.” Washington, DC: George Washington 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

Eligon, J. (2017). Trump’s ‘Carnage’ Label Misses Complex Reality of Many Urban Areas. New York Times, A12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (van Deursen, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Saunders and Verdin, 2009; van Deursen, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Saunders and Verdin, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Yang et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Cancer Genetics
Abbreviation	Front. Oncol.
ISSN (online)	2234-943X
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology