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

Long, J. C. S. (2011). Piecemeal cuts won’t add up to radical reductions. Nature 478, 429.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tan, S., and Lü, J. (2014). Characterizing the effect of population heterogeneity on evolutionary dynamics on complex networks. Sci. Rep. 4, 5034.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tanner, C., Manca, C., and Leutwyler, S. (2003). Probing the threshold to H atom transfer along a hydrogen-bonded ammonia wire. Science 302, 1736–1739.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Treviño, M., Oviedo, T., Jendritza, P., Li, S.-B., Köhr, G., and De Marco, R. J. (2013). Controlled variations in stimulus similarity during learning determine visual discrimination capacity in freely moving mice. Sci. Rep. 3, 1048.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pascoe, N. (2011). Reliability Technology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Delgado, J. M. P. Q. ed. (2012). Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Rooney, J. (2007). “William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879),” in Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science: Their Contributions and Legacies Part 1, ed. M. Ceccarelli (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 79–116.

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

Andrew, E. (2013). Neanderthal genome shows high levels of inbreeding. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/neanderthal-genome-shows-high-levels-inbreeding/ (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 (1987). Education Information: Changes in Funds and Priorities Have Affected Production and Quality. 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

Wahl, S. E. (2008). Registered nurse preceptorship orientation: A study of the relationship between burnout rates of new graduates and number of preceptors worked with in the clinical orientation phase. Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Poniewozik, J. (2017). Crossing to Grief’s Other Side. New York Times, C7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Long, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Long, 2011; Tan and Lü, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Tan and Lü, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Treviño et al., 2013)

About the journal

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