How to format your references using the Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences citation style

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

Qiu, J. (2009). Obituary: Qian Xuesen (1911-2009). Nature 462, 735.

A journal article with 2 authors

Regoes, R. R., and Bonhoeffer, S. (2006). Emergence of drug-resistant influenza virus: population dynamical considerations. Science 312, 389–391.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ammerman, A. J., Pinhasi, R., and Bánffy, E. (2006). Comment on “Ancient DNA from the first European farmers in 7500-year-old Neolithic sites.” Science 312, 1875; author reply 1875.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Osterlund, M. T., Hardtke, C. S., Wei, N., and Deng, X. W. (2000). Targeted destabilization of HY5 during light-regulated development of Arabidopsis. Nature 405, 462–466.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Teodorescu, P. P., Kecs, W. W., and Toma, A. (2013). Distribution Theory. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Ortmeier, F., and Daniel, P. eds. (2012). Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security: 31st International Conference, SAFECOMP 2012, Magdeburg, Germany, September 25-28, 2012. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Cho, J., Vosgien, T., Prante, T., and Gerhard, D. (2016). “KBE-PLM Integration Schema for Engineering Knowledge Re-use and Design Automation,” in Product Lifecycle Management for Digital Transformation of Industries: 13th IFIP WG 5.1 International Conference, PLM 2016, Columbia, SC, USA, July 11-13, 2016, Revised Selected Papers, eds. R. Harik, L. Rivest, A. Bernard, B. Eynard, and A. Bouras (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 43–55.

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 Biosciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). New Artificial Pancreas Could Be A Life Changer For Type 1 Diabetics. 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 (1981). Changes Needed in Administering Relief to Industries Hurt by Overseas Competition. 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

Foley, J. D. (2012). Comparing Kac-Moody groups over the complex numbers and fields of positive characteristic via homotopy theory. La Jolla, CA: University of California San Diego.

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

Lyman, R., and Walsh, M. W. (2013). Police Salaries and Pensions Push California City to Brink. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Qiu, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Regoes and Bonhoeffer, 2006; Qiu, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Regoes and Bonhoeffer, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Osterlund et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences
Abbreviation	Front. Mol. Biosci.
ISSN (online)	2296-889X
Scope