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

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Charlesworth, B. (2010). Evolution. Variation catches a ride. Science 330, 326–327.
A journal article with 2 authors
Benton, M. J., and Ayala, F. J. (2003). Dating the tree of life. Science 300, 1698–1700.
A journal article with 3 authors
Weiss, E., Kislev, M. E., and Hartmann, A. (2006). Anthropology. Autonomous cultivation before domestication. Science 312, 1608–1610.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Rajala, R. V. S., Rajala, A., Morris, A. J., and Anderson, R. E. (2014). Phosphoinositides: minor lipids make a major impact on photoreceptor cell functions. Sci. Rep. 4, 5463.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Fisk, P. (2013). Chemical Risk Assessment. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Popescu-Zeletin, R., Rai, I. A., Jonas, K., and Villafiorita, A. eds. (2011). E-Infrastuctures and E-Services for Developing Countries: Second International ICST Conference, AFRICOM 2010, Cape Town, South Africa, November 25-26, 2010, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Mariconda, C., and Tonolo, A. (2016). “Inclusion/Exclusion,” in Discrete Calculus: Methods for Counting UNITEXT., ed. A. Tonolo (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 83–104.

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 Sociology.

Blog post
Andrews, R. (2016). DNA Reveals Caribbean “Island Murderer” Lineage Emerged As Dinosaurs Bit The Dust. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dna-caribbean-island-murderer-lineage-emerged-dinosaurs-bit-dust/ [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 (1981). Coordinating and Linking Programs Directed Toward Increasing the Numbers of Minority and Disadvantaged Individuals in the Health Professions. 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
Simmons, C. I. (2017). A Logistic Regression Analysis of Multiple Independent Variables Impacting Psychiatric Readmissions.

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
Stewart, J. B. (2017). Social Investing Entices Converts. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Charlesworth, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Benton and Ayala, 2003; Charlesworth, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Benton and Ayala, 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Rajala et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Sociology
AbbreviationFront. Sociol.
ISSN (online)2297-7775
Scope

Other styles