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

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

Powell, K. (2007). The places in between. Nature 446, 944–945.

A journal article with 2 authors

Drain, P. K., and Barry, M. (2010). Global health. Fifty years of U.S. embargo: Cuba’s health outcomes and lessons. Science 328, 572–573.

A journal article with 3 authors

Luo, Y., White, L., and Hui, D. (2004). Comment on “Impacts of fine root turnover on forest NPP and soil C sequestration potential.” Science 304, 1745; author reply 1745.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Fan, Y., Wei, Z., Wang, W., Tan, L., Jiang, H., Tian, L., et al. (2014). The incidence and distribution of surgical site infection in mainland China: a meta-analysis of 84 prospective observational studies. Sci. Rep. 4, 6783.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

van Gumster, J., and Shimonski, R. (2010). GIMP Bible. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Nelson, T., and Winawer, H. eds. (2014). Critical Topics in Family Therapy: AFTA Monograph Series Highlights. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Umemura, K., and Church, K. (2009). “Substring Statistics,” in Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing: 10th International Conference, CICLing 2009, Mexico City, Mexico, March 1-7, 2009. Proceedings, ed. A. Gelbukh (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 53–71.

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 Chemistry.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). FDA Considering Releasing Genetically-Modified Mosquitos In Florida. IFLScience.

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 (2004). Information Technology: Major Federal Networks That Support Homeland Security Functions. 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

Catt, B. S. (2010). The reduction of surgical errors through a development of safety culture, teamwork, and communication. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Sisario, B. (2017). Ed Sheeran’s ‘Divide’ Breaks a Global Record. New York Times, C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Powell, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Powell, 2007; Drain and Barry, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Drain and Barry, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Fan et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Chemistry
Abbreviation	Front. Chem.
ISSN (online)	2296-2646
Scope	General Chemistry