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

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

Oxtoby, D. W. (2000). Phase transitions. Catching crystals at birth. Nature 406, 464–465.

A journal article with 2 authors

Miyamichi, K., and Luo, L. (2009). Neuroscience. Brain wiring by presorting axons. Science 325, 544–545.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zenkin, N., Yuzenkova, Y., and Severinov, K. (2006). Transcript-assisted transcriptional proofreading. Science 313, 518–520.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wilf, P., Labandeira, C. C., Johnson, K. R., and Ellis, B. (2006). Decoupled plant and insect diversity after the end-Cretaceous extinction. Science 313, 1112–1115.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pachamanova, D. A., and Fabozzi, F. J. (2016). Portfolio Construction and Analytics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ramos, F. F., Larios Rosillo, V., and Unger, H. eds. (2005). Advanced Distributed Systems: 5th International School and Symposium, ISSADS 2005, Guadalajara, Mexico, January 24-28, 2005, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Welch, A. (2005). “From Peregrinatio Academica to Global Academic: The Internationalisation of the Profession,” in The Professoriate: Profile of a Profession, ed. A. Welch (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 71–96.

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 Communication.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). How We Plan To Bring Dark Matter To Light. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/how-we-plan-bring-dark-matter-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 (1991). Digests of Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States, Vol. II, No. 5. 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

Baker, T. N. (2017). The Impact of Undergraduate Research Participation on Research Self-Efficacy. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic 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

Marx, L. (2010). Elizabeth Greig and Jason Extein. New York Times, ST15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Oxtoby, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Oxtoby, 2000; Miyamichi and Luo, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Miyamichi and Luo, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Wilf et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Communication
Abbreviation	Front. Commun.
ISSN (online)	2297-900X
Scope