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

Rastan S. Mary F. Lyon (1925-2014). Nature (2015) 518:36.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pieters J, Ploegh H. Microbiology. Chemical warfare and mycobacterial defense. Science (2003) 302:1900–1902.

A journal article with 3 authors

Costello MJ, May RM, Stork NE. Response to comments on “Can we name Earth’s species before they go extinct?” Science (2013) 341:237.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Joshi N, Shirsath N, Singh A, Joshi KS, Banerjee R. Endogenous lung surfactant inspired pH responsive nanovesicle aerosols: pulmonary compatible and site-specific drug delivery in lung metastases. Sci Rep (2014) 4:7085.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Estopinal SV, Lathrop W. Professional Surveyors and Real Property Descriptions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2011).

An edited book

Li S, Wang X, Okazaki Y, Kawabe J, Murofushi T, Guan L eds. Nonlinear Mathematics for Uncertainty and its Applications. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. (2011). XVIII, 710 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Scholz F, Zakharova EA, Kolpakova NA, Sister JD, Mairanovsky VG. “The Development of Voltammetric Electroanalysis in the Former USSR.,” In: Scholz F, editor. Electrochemistry in a Divided World: Innovations in Eastern Europe in the 20th Century. Cham: Springer International Publishing (2015). p. 97–178

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

Davis J. Sea Level Rise May Mean That The UK Loses Some Of Its Mountains. IFLScience (2016)

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. Space Shuttle: Issues Associated With the Vandenberg Launch Site. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (1986).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Davies GL. An analysis of Pat Metheny’s and Lyle Mays’s “Third Wind”: Arranging techniques and performance considerations. [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach. (2015).

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

Wagner J. Against All Odds, Mets Overcome a Season of Adversity and Clinch a Playoff Berth. New York Times (2016)SP11.

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