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:

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

Johnson, C. (2009). Paleontology. Megafaunal decline and fall. Science 326, 1072–1073.

A journal article with 2 authors

Norell, M. A., and Clarke, J. A. (2001). Fossil that fills a critical gap in avian evolution. Nature 409, 181–184.

A journal article with 3 authors

Amari, T., Canou, A., and Aly, J.-J. (2014). Characterizing and predicting the magnetic environment leading to solar eruptions. Nature 514, 465–469.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Myers, N., Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., da Fonseca, G. A., and Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403, 853–858.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Misstear, B., Banks, D., and Clark, L. (2006). Water Wells and Boreholes. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Tsay, H.-S., Shyur, L.-F., Agrawal, D. C., Wu, Y.-C., and Wang, S.-Y. eds. (2016). Medicinal Plants - Recent Advances in Research and Development. Singapore: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Chakraborty, A., and Konar, A. (2009). “Brain Imaging and Psycho-pathological Studies on Self-regulation of Emotion,” in Emotional Intelligence: A Cybernetic Approach Studies in Computational Intelligence., ed. A. Konar (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 93–132.

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

Luntz, S. (2015). Male and Female Mice Process Pain Differently. IFLScience.

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 (2008). Safe Routes to School: Progress in Implementing the Program, but a Comprehensive Plan to Evaluate Program Outcomes Is Needed. 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

Aparicio, E. M. (2015). Examining Latina/o STEM degree aspirations.

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

Hofmann, M. (2017). Personality Is Everything. New York Times, BR16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Johnson, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Norell and Clarke, 2001; Johnson, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Norell and Clarke, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Myers et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Gastrointestinal Sciences
Abbreviation	Front. Physiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-042X
Scope	Physiology Physiology (medical)

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