How to format your references using the Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering citation style

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

Pan, J. (2012). From industrial toward ecological in China. Science 336, 1397.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rhie, J., and Romanowicz, B. (2004). Excitation of Earth’s continuous free oscillations by atmosphere-ocean-seafloor coupling. Nature 431, 552–556.

A journal article with 3 authors

Su, Q.-P., Yang, C.-P., and Zheng, S.-B. (2014). Fast and simple scheme for generating NOON states of photons in circuit QED. Sci. Rep. 4, 3898.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Aoki, S. K., Diner, E. J., de Roodenbeke, C. T., Burgess, B. R., Poole, S. J., Braaten, B. A., et al. (2010). A widespread family of polymorphic contact-dependent toxin delivery systems in bacteria. Nature 468, 439–442.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Moir, I., and Seabridge, A. G. (2006). Military Avionics Systems. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Alleva, G., and Giommi, A. eds. (2016). Topics in Theoretical and Applied Statistics. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Inaba, M. (2009). “Chemical Degradation of Perfluorinated Sulfonic Acid Membranes,” in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Durability, eds. F. N. Büchi, M. Inaba, and T. J. Schmidt (New York, NY: Springer), 57–69.

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 Mechanical Engineering.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016). Genetic Link Between Mental Illness And Drug Abuse Uncovered. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/genetic-link-between-mental-illness-drug-abuse-uncovered/ [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 (1994). New Denver Airport: Impact of the Delayed Baggage System. 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

Rodman, R. A. (2010). Casual factors that contribute to gender bias in career choice among junior high school age females.

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

Koblin, J. (2017). E!, a Mainstay on the Red Carpet, Buys the People’s Choice Awards. New York Times, B4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pan, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Rhie and Romanowicz, 2004; Pan, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Rhie and Romanowicz, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Aoki et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering
Abbreviation	Front. Mech. Eng.
ISSN (online)	2297-3079
Scope