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

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

Prieto, G. A. (2012). Geophysics. Imaging the deep Earth. Science 338, 1037–1038.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frohlich, M. W., and Chase, M. W. (2007). After a dozen years of progress the origin of angiosperms is still a great mystery. Nature 450, 1184–1189.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brown, R. R., Deletic, A., and Wong, T. H. F. (2015). Interdisciplinarity: How to catalyse collaboration. Nature 525, 315–317.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Blum, J. D., Klaue, A., Nezat, C. A., Driscoll, C. T., Johnson, C. E., Siccama, T. G., et al. (2002). Mycorrhizal weathering of apatite as an important calcium source in base-poor forest ecosystems. Nature 417, 729–731.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Xiu, L. (2012). Nanometer Frequency Synthesis Beyond the Phase-Locked Loop. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Benatti, F., Fannes, M., Floreanini, R., and Petritis, D. eds. (2010). Quantum Information, Computation and Cryptography: An Introductory Survey of Theory, Technology and Experiments. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Fujiki, Y., Okumoto, K., Mukai, S., and Tamura, S. (2014). “Molecular Basis for Peroxisome Biogenesis Disorders,” in Molecular Machines Involved in Peroxisome Biogenesis and Maintenance, eds. C. Brocard and A. Hartig (Vienna: Springer), 91–110.

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 Pharmacology.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2017). T. Rex Ants Seen Alive For First Time. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/t-rex-ants-seen-alive-for-first-time/ (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 (2015). Highlights of a Forum: 3D Printing: Opportunities, Challenges, and Policy Implications of Additive Manufacturing. 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

Bai, H. (2017). Cognitive processes of prioritization in multitasking. Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State University.

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

Pilon, M. (2012). For Olympic Contenders, the Prefontaine Serves as a Tuneup and as a Barometer. New York Times, SP7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Prieto, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Frohlich and Chase, 2007; Prieto, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Frohlich and Chase, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Blum et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Pharmacology
Abbreviation	Front. Pharmacol.
ISSN (online)	1663-9812
Scope	Pharmacology (medical) Pharmacology