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

Fara, P. (2009). A microscopic reality tale. Nature 459, 642–644.

A journal article with 2 authors

Macfarlane, A., and Martin, G. (2004). Beyond the ivory tower. A world of glass. Science 305, 1407–1408.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rozin, P., Haidt, J., and Fincher, K. (2009). Psychology. From oral to moral. Science 323, 1179–1180.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Gierliński, M., Middleton, M., Ward, M., and Done, C. (2008). A periodicity of approximately 1 hour in X-ray emission from the active galaxy RE J1034+396. Nature 455, 369–371.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Xing, B., Vecitis, C. D., and Senesi, N. (2016). Engineered Nanoparticles and the Environment: Biophysicochemical Processes and Toxicity. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kelley, D. H. (2005). Exploring Ancient Skies: An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy. , ed. E. F. Milone New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Vázquez Álvarez, A. J., and Erwin, R. S. (2015). “Optimal Satellite Range Scheduling,” in An Introduction to Optimal Satellite Range Scheduling Springer Optimization and Its Applications., ed. R. S. Erwin (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 49–73.

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

Andrew, E. (2015). Creating Dinosaurs: Why Jurassic World Could Never Work. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/creating-dinosaurs-why-jurassic-world-could-never-work/ [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 (1999). Federal Judiciary: Information on the Weighted Filings Assigned to Senior District and Magistrate Judges in Fiscal Year 1997 in 21 District Courts. 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

Tanag, H. B. (2017). Building bridges of hope after loss: A self-directed workbook for foster parents.

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

Markoff, J. (2017). Massachusetts Start-Up Trumpets Advance in Battery Capacity. New York Times, B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fara, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Macfarlane and Martin, 2004; Fara, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Macfarlane and Martin, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Gierliński et al., 2008)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides