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

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

Nathan, C. (2002). Immunology. Catalytic antibody bridges innate and adaptive immunity. Science 298, 2143–2144.

A journal article with 2 authors

Srivastava, D., and Ivey, K. N. (2006). Potential of stem-cell-based therapies for heart disease. Nature 441, 1097–1099.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sigman, D. M., Hain, M. P., and Haug, G. H. (2010). The polar ocean and glacial cycles in atmospheric CO(2) concentration. Nature 466, 47–55.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Jackson, R. B., Jobbágy, E. G., Avissar, R., Roy, S. B., Barrett, D. J., Cook, C. W., et al. (2005). Trading water for carbon with biological carbon sequestration. Science 310, 1944–1947.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Godula-Jopek, A., Jehle, W., and Wellnitz, J. (2012). Hydrogen Storage Technologies. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Langenhan, T., and Schöneberg, T. eds. (2016). Adhesion G Protein-coupled Receptors: Molecular, Physiological and Pharmacological Principles in Health and Disease. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Prassas, E. S., and Roess, R. P. (2013). “The Costs of Transportation for Alternative Economic Analysis,” in Engineering Economics and Finance for Transportation Infrastructure Springer Tracts on Transportation and Traffic., ed. R. P. Roess (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 73–111.

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 Materials.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Child Receives Double Hand Transplant. 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 (1997). Air Traffic Control: Complete and Enforced Architecture Needed for FAA Systems Modernization. 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

Seymour, C. R. (2017). Natives Versus Exotics and Grasses Versus Forbs: A Long-Term Study of Vegetation in La Jolla Valley.

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

Rothenberg, B. (2017). Young Stars Climb Rankings, Jolting Russia’s Dormant Men’s Game to Life. New York Times, B9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nathan, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Nathan, 2002; Srivastava and Ivey, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Srivastava and Ivey, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Jackson et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Materials
Abbreviation	Front. Mater.
ISSN (online)	2296-8016
Scope

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