How to format your references using the Frontiers in Systems Biology citation style

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

Buriak, J. M. (2004). Chemistry. Chemistry with nanoscale perfection. Science 304, 692–693.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mittermaier, A., and Kay, L. E. (2006). New tools provide new insights in NMR studies of protein dynamics. Science 312, 224–228.

A journal article with 3 authors

Burslem, D. F., Garwood, N. C., and Thomas, S. C. (2001). Ecology. Tropical forest diversity--the plot thickens. Science 291, 606–607.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hulot, G., Eymin, C., Langlais, B., Mandea, M., and Olsen, N. (2002). Small-scale structure of the geodynamo inferred from Oersted and Magsat satellite data. Nature 416, 620–623.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alacoque, J. C. (2012). Direct Eigen Control for Induction Machines and Synchronous Motors. Chichester, UK: A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Löffler, J., and Klann, M. eds. (2009). Mobile Response: Second International Workshop on Mobile Information Technology for Emergency Response, MobileResponse 2008. Bonn, Germany, May 29-30, 2008, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, B. X., and Japkowicz, N. (2008). “Boosting Support Vector Machines for Imbalanced Data Sets,” in Foundations of Intelligent Systems: 17th International Symposium, ISMIS 2008 Toronto, Canada, May 20-23, 2008 Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science., eds. A. An, S. Matwin, Z. W. Raś, and D. Ślęzak (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 38–47.

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 Systems Biology.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016). Here’s What Drugs Europeans Are Getting High On This Year. 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 (1999). Year 2000 Computing Challenge: FAA Continues to Make Important Strides, But Vulnerabilities Remain. 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

Santella Steen, S. (2017). The Potential of Television Programming as a Resource to Facilitate Academic Progress for Students who have a Specific Learning Disability in Reading.

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

Protess, B., and Silver-Greenberg, J. (2016). JPMorgan Said to Settle in Chinese Bribery Case. 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 (Buriak, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Buriak, 2004; Mittermaier and Kay, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Mittermaier and Kay, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Hulot et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Systems Biology
Abbreviation	Front. Psychiatry
ISSN (online)	1664-0640
Scope	Psychiatry and Mental health

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