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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Gibbons A. GENOMICS: Building a Case for Sequencing the Chimp. Science (2000) 289:1267a.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hill RA, Barton RA. Psychology: red enhances human performance in contests. Nature (2005) 435:293.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gustafson JL, Lim D, Miller SJ. Dynamic kinetic resolution of biaryl atropisomers via peptide-catalyzed asymmetric bromination. Science (2010) 328:1251–1255.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Artzy-Randrup Y, Fleishman SJ, Ben-Tal N, Stone L. Comment on “Network motifs: simple building blocks of complex networks” and “Superfamilies of evolved and designed networks.” Science (2004) 305:1107; author reply 1107.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Henderson TJ. Beyond Borders. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. (2011).

An edited book

Feldman YA, Kraft D, Kuflik T eds. Next Generation Information Technologies and Systems: 7th International Conference, NGITS 2009, Haifa, Israel, June 16-18, 2009. Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. (2009). X, 169 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Okuda H, Nakano A, Suzuki T, Hayakawa S, Inagaki S. “Multilayer Modeling of Driver Behavior Based on Hierarchical Mode Segmentation.,” In: Hansen JHL, Boyraz P, Takeda K, Abut H, editors. Digital Signal Processing for In-Vehicle Systems and Safety. New York, NY: Springer (2012). p. 57–70

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

Andrews R. New Drug Wards Off Advanced Pancreatic Cancer By Sending Immune System Into Overdrive. IFLScience (2016)

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. DOD Schools: Limitations in DOD-Sponsored Study on Transfer Alternatives Underscore Need for Additional Assessment. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (2005).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Howard JT. Transracial adoption psychoeducational services for potential adoptive parents: A grant proposal. [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach. (2010).

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

Shpigel B. For a Second Time This Year, Rio Defies the Odds. New York Times (2016)B10.

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