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

Frey, P. A. (2001). Enzymology. Coenzymes and radicals. Science 294, 2489–2490.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gerst, A., and Savage, M. K. (2004). Seismic anisotropy beneath Ruapehu volcano: a possible eruption forecasting tool. Science 306, 1543–1547.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lee, K., Zhang, Y., and Lee, S. E. (2008). Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATM orthologue suppresses break-induced chromosome translocations. Nature 454, 543–546.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Loppin, B., Bonnefoy, E., Anselme, C., Laurençon, A., Karr, T. L., and Couble, P. (2005). The histone H3.3 chaperone HIRA is essential for chromatin assembly in the male pronucleus. Nature 437, 1386–1390.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Colin, A. (2005). Fixed Income Attribution. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Xu, K. (2013). Myelinated Fibers and Saltatory Conduction in the Shrimp: The Fastest Impulse Conduction in the Animal Kingdom., ed. S. Terakawa. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

A chapter in an edited book

Ohkita, M., Tokutaka, H., Ohki, M., Oyabu, M., and Fujimura, K. (2013). “Classification of Chain-Link and Other Data with Spherical SOM,” in Advances in Self-Organizing Maps: 9th International Workshop, WSOM 2012 Santiago, Chile, December 12-14, 2012 Proceedings, eds. P. A. Estévez, J. C. Príncipe, and P. Zegers (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 35–44.

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

Andrew, E. (2015). Kenya Is A Breastfeeding Success Story But Still Has Its Challenges. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/kenya-breastfeeding-success-story-still-has-its-challenges/ (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 (1995). Financing College Facilities: Factors Limit Connie Lee’s Ability to Help More Schools. 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

Sydow, K. (2010). A life review and Memory Album program to enhance family communication in assisted living. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Blinder, A., and Philipps, D. (2017). Marine Crash Victims: Young Fathers, a Humming Sergeant, a Proud Texan. New York Times, A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Frey, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Frey, 2001; Gerst and Savage, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Gerst and Savage, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Loppin et al., 2005)

About the journal

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