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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Stevenson, P. A. (2009). Ecology. The key to Pandora’s box. Science 323, 594–595.
A journal article with 2 authors
Cai, W.-J., and Dai, M. (2004). Comment on “Enhanced open ocean storage of CO2 from shelf sea pumping.” Science 306, 1477; author reply 1477.
A journal article with 3 authors
Shaviv, N. J., Prokoph, A., and Veizer, J. (2014). Is the solar system’s galactic motion imprinted in the Phanerozoic climate? Sci. Rep. 4, 6150.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Rajkovic, A., Pangas, S. A., Ballow, D., Suzumori, N., and Matzuk, M. M. (2004). NOBOX deficiency disrupts early folliculogenesis and oocyte-specific gene expression. Science 305, 1157–1159.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Schwartz, R. A., Carew, M. G., and Maksimenko, T. (2010). Micro Markets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Nguyen, N. T., Blackstone, R. P., Morton, J. M., Ponce, J., and Rosenthal, R. J. eds. (2015). The ASMBS Textbook of Bariatric Surgery: Volume 1: Bariatric Surgery. New York, NY: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Hippler, R. K., Klopfer, D. S., Leventhal, L. M., Poor, G. M., Klein, B. A., and Jaffee, S. D. (2011). “More than Speed? An Empirical Study of Touchscreens and Body Awareness on an Object Manipulation Task,” in Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Techniques and Environments: 14th International Conference, HCI International 2011, Orlando, FL, USA, July 9-14, 2011, Proceedings, Part II Lecture Notes in Computer Science., ed. J. A. Jacko (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 33–42.

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
Andrew, E. (2015). FDA Approves New Drug To Treat Advanced Breast Cancer. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/fda-approves-new-drug-treat-advanced-breast-cancer/ [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 (2016). Commercial Space: FAA Should Examine How to Appropriately Regulate Space Support Vehicles. 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
Davis, T. E. (2010). Sedimentation solutions for the Port of Gulfport, MS.

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
Kristof, N. D. (2011). Tussling Over Jesus. New York Times, A31.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stevenson, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Cai and Dai, 2004; Stevenson, 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Cai and Dai, 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Rajkovic et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Earth Science
AbbreviationFront. Earth Sci.
ISSN (online)2296-6463
Scope

Other styles