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

Clarke, T. (2002). Sustainable development: now we’re talking. Nature 420, 733–734.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cha, R. S., and Kleckner, N. (2002). ATR homolog Mec1 promotes fork progression, thus averting breaks in replication slow zones. Science 297, 602–606.

A journal article with 3 authors

Paolo, F. S., Fricker, H. A., and Padman, L. (2015). Ice sheets. Volume loss from Antarctic ice shelves is accelerating. Science 348, 327–331.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li, J., Huang, S., Shao, K., Liu, Y., An, S., Kuang, Y., et al. (2013). A choline derivate-modified nanoprobe for glioma diagnosis using MRI. Sci. Rep. 3, 1623.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rowlinson, M. (2010). A Practical Guide to the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Eliades, T., and Eliades, G. eds. (2014). Plastics in Dentistry and Estrogenicity: A Guide to Safe Practice. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, Q., Zhang, X., Wang, Y., Chen, G., and Dan, F. (2013). “The Design and Development of Object-Oriented UAV Image Change Detection System,” in Geo-Informatics in Resource Management and Sustainable Ecosystem: International Symposium, GRMSE 2013, Wuhan, China, November 8-10, 2013, Proceedings, Part I, eds. F. Bian, Y. Xie, X. Cui, and Y. Zeng (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 33–42.

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

Andrew, E. (2015). Bowhead Whales Recorded Singing Unique New Songs. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/12-new-unique-bowhead-whale-songs-recorded-scientists/ (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). The Air Force Should Cancel Plans To Acquire Two Computer Systems at Most Bases. 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

Lupian, S. (2012). Educating the Latino community on the relationship between obesity and psychosocial well being. 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

Brunnermeier, M., James, H., and Landau, J.-P. (2016). Pondering Franco-German relations anew. New York Times, A13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clarke, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Cha and Kleckner, 2002; Clarke, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Cha and Kleckner, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2013)

About the journal

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