How to format your references using the Frontiers in Earth Science citation style

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

McFall-Ngai, M. (2007). Adaptive immunity: care for the community. Nature 445, 153.

A journal article with 2 authors

Vaughan, D. G., and Arthern, R. (2007). Climate change. Why is it hard to predict the future of ice sheets? Science 315, 1503–1504.

A journal article with 3 authors

Labrosse, S., Hernlund, J. W., and Coltice, N. (2007). A crystallizing dense magma ocean at the base of the Earth’s mantle. Nature 450, 866–869.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Araújo, A. D., Parteli, E. J. R., Pöschel, T., Andrade, J. S., and Herrmann, H. J. (2013). Numerical modeling of the wind flow over a transverse dune. Sci. Rep. 3, 2858.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Adamczyk, B. (2017). Foundations of Electromagnetic Compatibility. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Di Giuseppe, A., and Shiffman, M. A. eds. (2016). Aesthetic Plastic Surgery of the Abdomen. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Wu, C.-H. (2013). “Greater Coherence in Global Economic Policymaking: Progress and Prospect,” in European Yearbook of International Economic Law 2014, eds. C. Herrmann, M. Krajewski, and J. P. Terhechte (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 67–92.

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 Earth Science.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014). Amazing Animation Compares The Mass Of Various Objects In The Solar System. 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 (1973). Alleged Violations of the Kentucky State Plan for Vocational Education and Federal Regulations on Vocational Education by the Kentucky Department of Education. 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

Simon, J. T. (2017). Classification of Mechanical and Electrical Response of High Performance Fiber Reinforced-Geopolymer Composites (HPFR-GPC). 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

Paulson, M., and Kishkovsky, S. (2015). Play About Oscar Wilde Runs Afoul of Kremlin. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McFall-Ngai, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (McFall-Ngai, 2007; Vaughan and Arthern, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Vaughan and Arthern, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Araújo et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Earth Science
Abbreviation	Front. Earth Sci.
ISSN (online)	2296-6463
Scope