How to format your references using the Frontiers in Gastrointestinal Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Gastrointestinal Sciences. 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
Piran, T. (2002). Astronomy. Demotion looms for gamma-ray bursts. Science 295, 986–987.
A journal article with 2 authors
van den Heuvel, M. G. L., and Dekker, C. (2007). Motor proteins at work for nanotechnology. Science 317, 333–336.
A journal article with 3 authors
Powner, M. W., Gerland, B., and Sutherland, J. D. (2009). Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions. Nature 459, 239–242.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Jin, H., Sperka, T., Herrlich, P., and Morrison, H. (2006). Tumorigenic transformation by CPI-17 through inhibition of a merlin phosphatase. Nature 442, 576–579.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Benatar, D. (2012). The Second Sexism. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
An edited book
Lu, Q., and Gao, H. H. eds. (2015). Chinese Lexical Semantics: 16th Workshop, CLSW 2015, Beijing, China, May 9-11, 2015, Revised Selected Papers., 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Rosling, A., and Littlemore, K. (2011). “Improving Student Mental Models in a New University Information Setting,” in Digitisation Perspectives, ed. R. Rikowski (Rotterdam: SensePublishers), 89–101.

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 Gastrointestinal Sciences.

Blog post
Carpineti, A. (2016). The Mysterious CERN Detection Might Be More Than One Particle. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/the-mysterious-cern-detection-might-be-more-than-one-particle/ (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 (1986). Deactivating Research Vessels: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Use of Private Ships. 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
Valley, M. T. (2010). Deciphering the function of granule cell interneurons in the mouse main olfactory bulb: Insights from adult neurogenesis and local-field potentials. New York, NY: Columbia 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
Walsh, M. W. (2011). Contractor’s Work Faulted At U.S. Pension Guarantor. 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 (Piran, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Piran, 2002; van den Heuvel and Dekker, 2007).

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

  • Two authors: (van den Heuvel and Dekker, 2007)
  • Three or more authors: (Jin et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Gastrointestinal Sciences
AbbreviationFront. Physiol.
ISSN (online)1664-042X
ScopePhysiology
Physiology (medical)

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