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

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

Church, G. (2005). Let us go forth and safely multiply. Nature 438, 423.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fialko, Y., and Pearse, J. (2012). Sombrero uplift above the Altiplano-Puna Magma Body: evidence of a ballooning mid-crustal diapir. Science 338, 250–252.

A journal article with 3 authors

Langmore, N. E., Hunt, S., and Kilner, R. M. (2003). Escalation of a coevolutionary arms race through host rejection of brood parasitic young. Nature 422, 157–160.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wallrapp, A., Riesenfeld, S. J., Burkett, P. R., Abdulnour, R.-E. E., Nyman, J., Dionne, D., et al. (2017). Erratum: The neuropeptide NMU amplifies ILC2-driven allergic lung inflammation. Nature 551, 658.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cheremisinoff, N. P. (2013). Industrial Gas Flaring Practices. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Meier, A. (2009). eBusiness & eCommerce: Managing the Digital Value Chain., ed. H. Stormer. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Koszul, J. L. (2011). “Formes Harmoniques Vectorielles Sur Les Espaces Localement Symetriques,” in Geometry of Homogeneous Bounded Domains, ed. E. Vesentini (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 199–261.

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 Microbiology.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016). Here’s Why ‘Baby Talk’ Is Good For Your Baby. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/heres-why-baby-talk-is-good-for-your-baby/ (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 (1979). Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Survey of Illegal Aliens and Alien Documentation, Identification and Telecommunication System. 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

Ng, A. (2012). Exploring the perceptions of health care leaders: Colorectal cancer screening barriers among Chinese Canadian women. Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix.

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

Walsh, M. W. (2010). A Footnote Explains a Dispute Over Treasury’s Bailout Figures. New York Times, B4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Church, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Church, 2005; Fialko and Pearse, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Fialko and Pearse, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Wallrapp et al., 2017)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Microbiology
Abbreviation	Front. Microbiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-302X
Scope	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)