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

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

Guan J-L. Cell biology. Integrins, rafts, Rac, and Rho. Science (2004) 303:773–774.

A journal article with 2 authors

Laflamme MA, Murry CE. Heart regeneration. Nature (2011) 473:326–335.

A journal article with 3 authors

Heinsohn R, Legge S, Endler JA. Extreme reversed sexual dichromatism in a bird without sex role reversal. Science (2005) 309:617–619.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Fu X-X, Zhang R-Q, Zhang G-P, Li Z-L. Rectifying properties of oligo(phenylene ethynylene) heterometallic molecular junctions: molecular length and side group effects. Sci Rep (2014) 4:6357.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stacey D. Aeronautical Radio Communication Systems and Networks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (2008).

An edited book

Samples JR, Ahmed IIK eds. Surgical Innovations in Glaucoma. New York, NY: Springer (2014). XI, 307 p. 227 illus p.

A chapter in an edited book

Tounsi I, Hadj Kacem M, Hadj Kacem A. “Building Correct by Construction SOA Design Patterns: Modeling and Refinement.,” In: Drira K, editor. Software Architecture: 7th European Conference, ECSA 2013, Montpellier, France, July 1-5, 2013. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer (2013). p. 33–44

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 Surgery.

Blog post

Andrew D. Exercise Changes The Way Our Bodies Work At A Molecular Level. IFLScience (2017) https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/exercise-changes-the-way-our-bodies-work-at-a-molecular-level/ [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. An Approach to the Audit of Research and Development Activities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office (1969).

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Hooper KJ. Los Angeles School Police Department Arrest Diversion: A Process Evaluation. [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach (2017).

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

Kelly M. Clinton Names Team to Probe U.S. Agencies. New York Times (1992)A16.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Surgery
Abbreviation	Front. Surg.
ISSN (online)	2296-875X
Scope