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

Rickaby, R. (2010). Journal club. A biogeochemist weighs up the climatic influence of CO2. Nature 465, 849.

A journal article with 2 authors

MacLeod, D. A., and Morse, A. P. (2014). Visualizing the uncertainty in the relationship between seasonal average climate and malaria risk. Sci. Rep. 4, 7264.

A journal article with 3 authors

Peng, L., Song, Z.-G., and Jiao, S.-C. (2014). Efficacy analysis of tyrosine kinase inhibitors on rare non-small cell lung cancer patients harboring complex EGFR mutations. Sci. Rep. 4, 6104.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhong, Y., Yan, W., Chen, J., and Shangguan, Z. (2014). Net ammonium and nitrate fluxes in wheat roots under different environmental conditions as assessed by scanning ion-selective electrode technique. Sci. Rep. 4, 7223.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tung, C.-H., Sheng, G. T. T., and Lu, C.-Y. (2005). ULSI Semiconductor Technology Atlas. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Chen, P.-C. (2016). US Firms’ Business Competence in the Taiwanese IT Industry., ed. Y.-C. Kim. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Oh, S., and Jin, Y. (2015). “Incremental Approximation Models for Constrained Evolutionary Optimization,” in Evolutionary Constrained Optimization, eds. R. Datta and K. Deb (New Delhi: Springer India), 135–156.

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

Evans, K. (2016). Scientifically Proven Features Men Find Attractive In Women. 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 (1974). Efforts To Stop Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Coming From and Through Mexico and Central America. 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

Miller, R. J. (2012). An Investigation Examining the Perceived Implications of Principal Leadership Changing A Large Comprehensive High School into Smaller Learning Communities. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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

Kanter, J., and Scott, M. (2016). Deal for Apple on Irish Taxes Is Ruled Illegal. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rickaby, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Rickaby, 2010; MacLeod and Morse, 2014).

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

Two authors: (MacLeod and Morse, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Zhong et al., 2014)

About the journal

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