How to format your references using the Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Cell and Developmental 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

Lerdau, M. (2007). Ecology. A positive feedback with negative consequences. Science 316, 212–213.

A journal article with 2 authors

Domon, B., and Aebersold, R. (2006). Mass spectrometry and protein analysis. Science 312, 212–217.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ozaki, M., Kato, J.-I., and Kawata, S. (2011). Surface-plasmon holography with white-light illumination. Science 332, 218–220.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chen, Z., Zhou, C., Xiao, S., Wang, W., Guan, C., Hua, H., et al. (2014). New Ediacara fossils preserved in marine limestone and their ecological implications. Sci. Rep. 4, 4180.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wang, Z.-G. (2016). Internal Combustion Processes of Liquid Rocket Engines. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte Ltd.

An edited book

Namatame, A., Kaizouji, T., and Aruka, Y. eds. (2006). The Complex Networks of Economic Interactions: Essays in Agent-Based Economics and Econophysics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Catthoor, F., Raghavan, P., Lambrechts, A., Jayapala, M., Kritikakou, A., and Absar, J. (2010). “Overall Framework for Exploration,” in Ultra-Low Energy Domain-Specific Instruction-Set Processors, eds. P. Raghavan, A. Lambrechts, M. Jayapala, A. Kritikakou, and J. Absar (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 83–113.

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 Cell and Developmental Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2013). Completely Blind People Still Able To React To Light. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/completely-blind-people-still-able-react-light/ (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 (2009). Meal Counting and Claiming by Food Service Management Companies in the School Meal Programs. 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

Emerson, J. D. (2001). The Jambalaya That is My Brain. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati.

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

Williams, J. (2017). The Teacher Learns She’s a Student, Too. New York Times, C5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lerdau, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Domon and Aebersold, 2006; Lerdau, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Domon and Aebersold, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Chen et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology
Abbreviation	Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
ISSN (online)	2296-634X
Scope