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

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

Walsh, R. W. (2005). Astronomy. How is the solar corona heated? Science 307, 51–53.

A journal article with 2 authors

Conrado, R. J., and Gonzalez, R. (2014). Chemistry. Envisioning the bioconversion of methane to liquid fuels. Science 343, 621–623.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gadalla, M. N., Abdel-Rahman, M., and Shamim, A. (2014). Design, optimization and fabrication of a 28.3 THz nano-rectenna for infrared detection and rectification. Sci. Rep. 4, 4270.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Cao, Y., Jin, X., Huang, H., Derebe, M. G., Levin, E. J., Kabaleeswaran, V., et al. (2011). Crystal structure of a potassium ion transporter, TrkH. Nature 471, 336–340.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stoican, F., and Olaru, S. (2013). Set-theoretic Fault-tolerant Control in Multisensor Systems. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

McAlpine, S. R., and Edkins, A. L. eds. (2016). Heat Shock Protein Inhibitors: Success Stories., 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Perello, M., and Raingo, J. (2014). “Central Ghrelin Receptors and Food Intake,” in Central Functions of the Ghrelin Receptor, eds. J. Portelli and I. Smolders (New York, NY: Springer), 65–88.

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 Physiology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014). Octopus That Walks On Land. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/octopus-walks-land/ (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 (1980). The Office of Science and Technology Policy: Adaptation to a President’s Operating Style May Conflict With Congressionally Mandated Assignments. 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

Gamez, T. E. (2012). Preventing child maltreatment among children with non-resident fathers: A grant proposal. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Feeney, K. (2007). Falafel, Panini Style. New York Times, NJ12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Walsh, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Walsh, 2005; Conrado and Gonzalez, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Conrado and Gonzalez, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Cao et al., 2011)

About the journal

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