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

Reed, J. C. (2011). Cancer. Priming cancer cells for death. Science 334, 1075–1076.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brumfiel, G., and Marris, E. (2006). Physics wins the US budget race. Nature 439, 644–645.

A journal article with 3 authors

Colombo, M. G., Franzoni, C., and Rossi-Lamastra, C. (2015). ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Cash from the crowd. Science 348, 1201–1202.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Liu, B., Bhatt, D., Oltvai, Z. N., Greenberger, J. S., and Bahar, I. (2014). Significance of p53 dynamics in regulating apoptosis in response to ionizing radiation, and polypharmacological strategies. Sci. Rep. 4, 6245.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kesidis, G. (2007). An Introduction to Communication Network Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Dang, Q. A., Nguyen, X. H., Le, H. B., Nguyen, V. H., and Bao, V. N. Q. eds. (2015). Some Current Advanced Researches on Information and Computer Science in Vietnam: Post-proceedings of The First NAFOSTED Conference on Information and Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Newcomb, B., and Hannun, Y. A. (2015). “Sphingolipids as Mediators of Breast Cancer Progression, Metastasis, Response and Resistance to Chemotherapy,” in Bioactive Sphingolipids in Cancer Biology and Therapy, eds. Y. A. Hannun, C. Luberto, C. Mao, and L. M. Obeid (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 81–106.

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. (2014). Mars Coming Into Opposition. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/mars-coming-opposition/ (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 (2015). Vehicle Safety Inspections: Improved DOT Communication Could Better Inform State 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

Oduntan, A. (2017). The Rheological Study of the Effects of Surfactant and Hydrophilic Bentonite Nano clay on Oil in Water Emulsions for Enhanced Oil Recovery. Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana.

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

Gustines, G. G. (2016). In a First, Graphic Novelist Is National Envoy for Children’s Literature. 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 (Reed, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Brumfiel and Marris, 2006; Reed, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Brumfiel and Marris, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Liu et al., 2014)

About the journal

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