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

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

Macklis, R. M. (2002). Portrait of Science. Scientist, technologist, proto-feminist, superstar. Science 295, 1647–1648.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kern, B., and Martin, C. (2002). Optical pulsations from the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U0142+61. Nature 417, 527–529.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xu, X., Han, F., and Zhao, Q. (2014). Homologies and homeotic transformation of the theropod “semilunate” carpal. Sci. Rep. 4, 6042.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hofmann, D. C., Suh, J.-Y., Wiest, A., Duan, G., Lind, M.-L., Demetriou, M. D., et al. (2008). Designing metallic glass matrix composites with high toughness and tensile ductility. Nature 451, 1085–1089.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grigg, N. S. (2010). Infrastructure Finance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Borghese, F. (2007). Scattering from Model Nonspherical Particles: Theory and Applications to Environmental Physics., eds. P. Denti and R. Saija. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Huang, R., and Yang, J. (2016). “Digital Learners and Digital Teachers: Challenges, Changes, and Competencies,” in Competencies in Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership in the Digital Age: Papers from CELDA 2014, eds. J. M. Spector, D. Ifenthaler, D. G. Sampson, and P. Isaias (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 47–56.

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 Virology.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2014). Five Phenomenal Science Stunts Done With Dry Ice. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/five-phenomenal-science-stunts-done-dry-ice/ (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 (1998). Aerospace Testing: Promise of Closer NASA/DOD Cooperation Remains Largely Unfulfilled. 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

Mehta, K. (2015). An optimized modified booth recoder for efficient design of the add-multiply operator. 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

Billard, M. (2010). For Stepping Across a Bridge. New York Times, E5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macklis, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Kern and Martin, 2002; Macklis, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Kern and Martin, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Hofmann et al., 2008)

About the journal

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