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

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

Markó, I. E. (2001). Natural product synthesis. The art of total synthesis. Science 294, 1842–1843.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wolchok, J. D., and Chan, T. A. (2014). Cancer: Antitumour immunity gets a boost. Nature 515, 496–498.

A journal article with 3 authors

Martin-Lluesma, S., Stucke, V. M., and Nigg, E. A. (2002). Role of Hec1 in spindle checkpoint signaling and kinetochore recruitment of Mad1/Mad2. Science 297, 2267–2270.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Osterloh, A., Amico, L., Falci, G., and Fazio, R. (2002). Scaling of entanglement close to a quantum phase transition. Nature 416, 608–610.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chandra, S. (2016). Energy, Entropy and Engines. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Shaikh, F. K., Chowdhry, B. S., Ammari, H. M., Uqaili, M. A., and Shah, A. eds. (2013). Wireless Sensor Networks for Developing Countries: First International Conference, WSN4DC, Jamshoro, Pakistan, April 24-26, 2013, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Dong, X., Clark, J. A., and Jacob, J. L. (2008). “Threat Modelling in User Performed Authentication,” in Information and Communications Security: 10th International Conference, ICICS 2008 Birmingham, UK, October 20 - 22, 2008 Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science., eds. L. Chen, M. D. Ryan, and G. Wang (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 49–64.

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 Environmental Science.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014). Study Reveals Gene Mutation That Makes You Need Less Sleep. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/study-reveals-gene-mutation-makes-you-need-less-sleep/ [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 (2006). Telecommunications: FCC Needs to Improve Its Ability to Monitor and Determine the Extent of Competition in Dedicated Access Services. 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

Cai, S. (2008). 3D Numerical Modeling of Dry/Wet Contact Mechanics for Rough, Multilayered Elastic-Plastic Solid Surfaces and Effects of Hydrophilicity/Hydrophobicity During Separation with Applications.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2008). Supreme Court Restricts the Taxation of Income of Companies Based Out of State. New York Times, C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Markó, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Markó, 2001; Wolchok and Chan, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Wolchok and Chan, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Osterloh et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Environmental Science
Abbreviation	Front. Environ. Sci.
ISSN (online)	2296-665X
Scope