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

Connor, C. E. (2010). Neuroscience. A new viewpoint on faces. Science 330, 764–765.

A journal article with 2 authors

Blattman, J. N., and Greenberg, P. D. (2004). Cancer immunotherapy: a treatment for the masses. Science 305, 200–205.

A journal article with 3 authors

Feurer, T., Vaughan, J. C., and Nelson, K. A. (2003). Spatiotemporal coherent control of lattice vibrational waves. Science 299, 374–377.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hu, K., Harper, D. G., Shea, S. A., Stopa, E. G., and Scheer, F. A. J. L. (2013). Noninvasive fractal biomarker of clock neurotransmitter disturbance in humans with dementia. Sci. Rep. 3, 2229.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Datta, T. K. (2010). Seismic Analysis of Structures. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Rzoska, S. J., and Mazur, V. A. eds. (2007). Soft Matter under Exogenic Impacts. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Fastl, H., and Zwicker, E. (2007). “Pitch and Pitch Strength,” in Psychoacoustics: Facts and Models, ed. E. Zwicker (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 111–148.

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

Luntz, S. (2014). New Metal-Air Battery Drives Car 1800Km Without Recharge. 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 (1994). Space Shuttle: Incomplete Data and Funding Approach Increase Cost Risk for Upgrade 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

Morrison, C. (2009). Who am I? Identity formation of children in foster care: A curriculum development. 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

Santos, F. (2014). New Mexico: 2 Students Wounded In Shooting at Middle School. New York Times, A16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Connor, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Blattman and Greenberg, 2004; Connor, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Blattman and Greenberg, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Hu et al., 2013)

About the journal

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