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

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

Yang X. An embryonic nation. Nature (2004) 428:210–212.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li X, Xu J. Dietary and circulating lycopene and stroke risk: a meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sci Rep (2014) 4:5031.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rocha PP, Chaumeil J, Skok JA. Molecular biology. Finding the right partner in a 3D genome. Science (2013) 342:1333–1334.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Ros A, Eichhorn R, Regtmeier J, Duong TT, Reimann P, Anselmetti D. Brownian motion: absolute negative particle mobility. Nature (2005) 436:928.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mazer A. Electric Power Planning for Regulated and Deregulated Markets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2006).

An edited book

Kapur D ed. Computer Mathematics: 8th Asian Symposium, ASCM 2007, Singapore, December 15-17, 2007. Revised and Invited Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. (2008). XI, 359 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Mallikarjuna N, Coyne C, Cho S, Rynearson S, Rajesh PN, Jadhav DR, Muehlbauer FJ. “Cicer.,” In: Kole C, editor. Wild Crop Relatives: Genomic and Breeding Resources: Legume Crops and Forages. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer (2011). p. 63–82

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 Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. Russian Company Announces It Is Planning To Build A Lunar Base. IFLScience (2015)

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. [Comments on the Federal Communications Commission’s Implementation of Section 254(h) of the Communications Act of 1934]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (1998).

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Greene L. Perceptions Of Women Leaders In A Catholic Archdiocese: A Phenomenological Study. [Doctoral dissertation]. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University. (2017).

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

Williams J. Updating DNA’s Life Story. New York Times (2017)BR4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Medicine
Abbreviation	Front. Med. (Lausanne)
ISSN (online)	2296-858X
Scope