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

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

Landau, S. (2015). Control use of data to protect privacy. Science 347, 504–506.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kummamuru, R. K., and Soh, Y.-A. (2008). Electrical effects of spin density wave quantization and magnetic domain walls in chromium. Nature 452, 859–863.

A journal article with 3 authors

Costello, C., Gaines, S., and Gerber, L. R. (2012). Conservation science: A market approach to saving the whales. Nature 481, 139–140.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li, B., Song, Z., Li, Z., Wang, H., Gui, R., and Song, R. (2014). Phylogenetic variation of phytolith carbon sequestration in bamboos. Sci. Rep. 4, 4710.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

D’Andrea, A., and Sjogren, J. (2013). Veterinary Technician’s Large Animal Daily Reference Guide. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

North, K., and Varvakis, G. eds. (2016). Competitive Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises: Increasing Crisis Resilience, Agility and Innovation in Turbulent Times., 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Procesi, C. (2009). “The spirit of algebra,” in Mathknow: Mathematics, Applied Sciences and Real Life, eds. M. Emmer and A. Quarteroni (Milano: Springer), 37–57.

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 Education.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2015). Company Patents Design For A Space Elevator, But Don’t Get Your Hopes Up Just Yet. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/why-you-shouldnt-get-excited-about-space-elevators-just-yet/ (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 (1995). Brockton Substance Abuse. 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

Augeri, J. E. (2015). Supportive Services for Homeless Veteran Women: Policy Implementation and Discretionary Practices of Those at the Front-Lines of Public Service. Washington, DC: George Washington 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

Stewart, J. B. (2016). For Now, Investors Go Back to Buying. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Landau, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Kummamuru and Soh, 2008; Landau, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Kummamuru and Soh, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Education
Abbreviation	Front. Educ.
ISSN (online)	2504-284X
Scope