How to format your references using the Frontiers in Livestock Genomics citation style

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

Gould, J. (2015). Cannabis: 4 big questions. Nature 525, S18.

A journal article with 2 authors

Collier, P., and Alles, C. M. (2010). Materials science. Materials ecology: an industrial perspective. Science 330, 919–920.

A journal article with 3 authors

Maeda, H., Norum, D. V. L., and Gallagher, T. F. (2005). Microwave manipulation of an atomic electron in a classical orbit. Science 307, 1757–1760.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Murray, C. D., Beurle, K., Cooper, N. J., Evans, M. W., Williams, G. A., and Charnoz, S. (2008). The determination of the structure of Saturn’s F ring by nearby moonlets. Nature 453, 739–744.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baker, K. R. (2011). Optimization Modeling with Spreadsheets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Wu, D. ed. (2011). Quantitative Financial Risk Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Noble, J., Piddocke, R., and Bakmand-Mikalski, D. (2011). “The Search User Interface,” in Pro SharePoint 2010 Search, eds. R. Piddocke and D. Bakmand-Mikalski (Berkeley, CA: Apress), 121–177.

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 Livestock Genomics.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014). Mysterious Disease Causes Sea Stars To Disintegrate. 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 (2001). Applying Agreed-Upon Procedures: Highway Trust Fund Excise Taxes. 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

Chen, C.-Y. (2010). The analysis of communication problems and language barriers between patients and physicians in California.

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

Leland, J. (2017). Comrades of the Sky. New York Times, MB8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gould, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Collier and Alles, 2010; Gould, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Collier and Alles, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Murray et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Livestock Genomics
Abbreviation	Front. Genet.
ISSN (online)	1664-8021
Scope	Genetics Molecular Medicine Genetics(clinical)