How to format your references using the Frontiers in Molecular and Cellular Oncology citation style

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

Dance, I. (2013). A molecular pathway for the egress of ammonia produced by nitrogenase. Sci. Rep. 3, 3237.

A journal article with 2 authors

Knouse, K. A., and Amon, A. (2015). Cell biology: the micronucleus gets its big break. Nature 522, 162–163.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gordon, A. L., Susanto, R. D., and Vranes, K. (2003). Cool Indonesian throughflow as a consequence of restricted surface layer flow. Nature 425, 824–828.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Seila, A. C., Calabrese, J. M., Levine, S. S., Yeo, G. W., Rahl, P. B., Flynn, R. A., et al. (2008). Divergent transcription from active promoters. Science 322, 1849–1851.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wang, Z.-G. (2016). Internal Combustion Processes of Liquid Rocket Engines. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte Ltd.

An edited book

Bengtsson, L., Bonnet, R.-M., Grinspoon, D., Koumoutsaris, S., Lebonnois, S., and Titov, D. eds. (2013). Towards Understanding the Climate of Venus: Applications of Terrestrial Models to Our Sister Planet. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hathorn, A., and Chapman, S. C. (2014). “Historical and Prospective Applications of ‘Quantitative Genomics’ in Utilising Germplasm Resources,” in Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources: Volume 1. Managing, sequencing and mining genetic resources, eds. R. Tuberosa, A. Graner, and E. Frison (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 93–110.

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 Molecular and Cellular Oncology.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2016). The Formation Of The Himalayas May Have Destroyed An Entire Continent. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/the-formation-of-the-himalayas-may-have-destroyed-an-entire-continent/ (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 (1999). Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 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

Swift, I. (2011). The Perceived Effect of Hidden Costs on the Operational Management of Information Technology Outsourcing: A Qualitative Study. 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

Vecsey, G. (2010). Underfunded and Over the Top. New York Times, B20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dance, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Dance, 2013; Knouse and Amon, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Knouse and Amon, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Seila et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Molecular and Cellular Oncology
Abbreviation	Front. Oncol.
ISSN (online)	2234-943X
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology