How to format your references using the Frontiers in Membrane Physiology and Biophysics citation style

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

Smaglik, P. (2004). Stem-cell state lines. Nature 429, 905.

A journal article with 2 authors

Contreras, J. L., and Reichman, J. H. (2015). DATA ACCESS. Sharing by design: Data and decentralized commons. Science 350, 1312–1314.

A journal article with 3 authors

Allanore, A., Yin, L., and Sadoway, D. R. (2013). A new anode material for oxygen evolution in molten oxide electrolysis. Nature 497, 353–356.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Feng, L., Zhou, S., Gu, L., Gell, D. A., Mackay, J. P., Weiss, M. J., et al. (2005). Structure of oxidized alpha-haemoglobin bound to AHSP reveals a protective mechanism for haem. Nature 435, 697–701.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hollins, C. (2012). Basic Guide to Anatomy and Physiology for Dental Care Professionals. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.,.

An edited book

Morewitz, S. J., and Sturdy Colls, C. eds. (2016). Handbook of Missing Persons. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Leoncini, X. (2015). “Self-Organized Regularity in Long-Range Systems,” in Nonlinear Dynamics New Directions: Models and Applications, eds. H. González-Aguilar and E. Ugalde (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 79–109.

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 Membrane Physiology and Biophysics.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). Couples Who Share Housework Equally Have More Sex, Claims Study. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/couples-who-share-housework-equally-have-more-sex-claims-study/ (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 (1990). Financial Problems in the Stafford Student Loan Program. 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

Liburd-Shaddai, J. L. (2012). The experiences of remedial instructors at one urban community college: A case study. Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Sisario, B. (2016). Green Day Is No. 1. New York Times, C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik, 2004; Contreras and Reichman, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Contreras and Reichman, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Feng et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Membrane Physiology and Biophysics
Abbreviation	Front. Physiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-042X
Scope	Physiology Physiology (medical)