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

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

Graf, H.-F. (2004). Atmospheric science. The complex interaction of aerosols and clouds. Science 303, 1309–1311.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gebbers, R., and Adamchuk, V. I. (2010). Precision agriculture and food security. Science 327, 828–831.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alexander, J. M., Diez, J. M., and Levine, J. M. (2015). Novel competitors shape species’ responses to climate change. Nature 525, 515–518.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Mu, J., Duan, J., Makova, K. D., Joy, D. A., Huynh, C. Q., Branch, O. H., et al. (2002). Chromosome-wide SNPs reveal an ancient origin for Plasmodium falciparum. Nature 418, 323–326.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kurrer, K.-E. (2016). Geschichte der Baustatik. Berlin, Germany: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Shin, J. C., Postiglione, G. A., and Huang, F. eds. (2015). Mass Higher Education Development in East Asia: Strategy, Quality, and Challenges. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Bozzelli, L. (2005). “Complexity Results on Branching-Time Pushdown Model Checking,” in Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation: 7th International Conference, VMCAI 2006, Charleston, SC, USA, January 8-10, 2006. Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science., eds. E. A. Emerson and K. S. Namjoshi (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 65–79.

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 Physiology.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2015). More Species of Bee Need Protection, Say Researchers. 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 (1978). Review of NASA Contract. 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

Horwitz, M. H. (2017). Morphodynamics and Sediment Transport Pathways of the John’s Pass-Blind Pass Dual Inlet System: Pinellas County, Florida.

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

McKINLEY, J. C., Jr., Mueller, B., and Schweber, N. (2015). Second Chances Kept Coming for Suspect in Officer’s Death. 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 (Graf, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Graf, 2004; Gebbers and Adamchuk, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Gebbers and Adamchuk, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Mu et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Physiology
Abbreviation	Front. Physiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-042X
Scope	Physiology Physiology (medical)

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