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

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

Famulok M. Molecular biology. RNAs turn on in tandem. Science (2004) 306:233–234.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rohwer F, Thurber RV. Viruses manipulate the marine environment. Nature (2009) 459:207–212.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tanaka G, Urabe C, Aihara K. Random and targeted interventions for epidemic control in metapopulation models. Sci Rep (2014) 4:5522.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Sun Z, Li G, Wang C, Jing Y, Zhu Y, Zhang S, Liu Y. Community dynamics of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes in an estuary reservoir. Sci Rep (2014) 4:6966.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Collier CG. Hydrometeorology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (2016).

An edited book

Magistris MD. Circuiti: Fondamenti di Circuiti per l’Ingegneria. Miano G, editor. Milano: Springer. (2007). XVII, 485 pagg p.

A chapter in an edited book

Basu M, Ho TK. “Linear Separability in Descent Procedures for Linear Classifiers.,” In: Basu M, Ho TK, editors. Data Complexity in Pattern Recognition. Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing. London: Springer (2006). p. 69–90

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 Immunology.

Blog post

Andrew E. World’s Most Lifelike Bionic Hand Developed. IFLScience (2015)

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. Federal Research: Aging Federal Laboratories Need Repairs and Upgrades. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (1993).

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Ouellette RL. Referral development results of relationship tie- strength for small business goal -directed networking groups. [Doctoral dissertation]. Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix. (2008).

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

Poniewozik J. A Vanished Woman’s Strange Return. New York Times (2016)C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Immunology
Abbreviation	Front. Immunol.
ISSN (online)	1664-3224
Scope