How to format your references using the Frontiers in Terrestrial Microbiology citation style

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

Baker, M. (2012). Functional genomics: The changes that count. Nature 482, 257, 259–62.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sprecher, S. G., and Desplan, C. (2008). Switch of rhodopsin expression in terminally differentiated Drosophila sensory neurons. Nature 454, 533–537.

A journal article with 3 authors

Garrick-Bethell, I., Nimmo, F., and Wieczorek, M. A. (2010). Structure and formation of the lunar farside highlands. Science 330, 949–951.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ghosh, D., Griswold, J., Erman, M., and Pangborn, W. (2009). Structural basis for androgen specificity and oestrogen synthesis in human aromatase. Nature 457, 219–223.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pérez, A. (2013). Mobile Networks Architecture. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Jacobson, M., and Ciolkosz, D. eds. (2013). Wood-Based Energy in the Northern Forests. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Pampolini, G., and Del Piero, G. (2009). “Strain Localization in Polyurethane Foams: Experiments and Theoretical Model,” in Mechanics of Microstructured Solids: Cellular Materials, Fibre Reinforced Solids and Soft Tissues Lecture Notes in Applied and Computational Mechanics., eds. J.-F. Ganghoffer and F. Pastrone (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 29–38.

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 Terrestrial Microbiology.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). Why Does Ouzo Turn Cloudy When You Add Water? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/why-does-ouzo-turn-cloudy-when-you-add-water/ [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 (2001). Internal Control Management and Evaluation Tool: Exposure Draft (Superseded by GAO-01-1008G). 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

Chen, M. S. (2014). Emergency shelter for abused and neglected elders A grant proposal project.

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

Dwyer, J. (2015). A Police Shot to a Boy’s Back, Echoing Since ’73. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Baker, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Sprecher and Desplan, 2008; Baker, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Sprecher and Desplan, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Ghosh et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Terrestrial Microbiology
Abbreviation	Front. Microbiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-302X
Scope	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)