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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Zoology. 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	Download the output style file
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

1. Parisi G. Brownian motion. Nature. 2005;433:221.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Mounce RCP, Wills MA. Phylogenetic position of Diania challenged. Nature. 2011;476:E1; discussion E3-4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Shinkai K, Mohrs M, Locksley RM. Helper T cells regulate type-2 innate immunity in vivo. Nature. 2002;420:825–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Greffet J-J, Carminati R, Joulain K, Mulet J-P, Mainguy S, Chen Y. Coherent emission of light by thermal sources. Nature. 2002;416:61–4.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Wong KD. Fundamentals of Wireless Communication Engineering Technologies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Berr F, Oyama T, Ponchon T, Yahagi N, editors. Early Neoplasias of the Gastrointestinal Tract: Endoscopic Diagnosis and Therapeutic Decisions. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Layton WJ, Rebholz LG. Phenomenology of ADMs. In: Rebholz L, editor. Approximate Deconvolution Models of Turbulence: Analysis, Phenomenology and Numerical Analysis. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 89–97.

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 Zoology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Polar bear cub at Toronto Zoo has first experience with snow. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Manned Undersea Science and Technology Needs Focus and Direction. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977 Jul. Report No.: PSAD-77-130.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Shambra SM. Automated Vulnerability Assessment of Mobile Device Vulnerabilities [Doctoral dissertation]. [Mississippi State, MS]: Mississippi State University; 2017.

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

1. Billard M. A Raid on Men’s Closets. New York Times. 2010 Jun 24;E6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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 Zoology
Abbreviation	Front. Zool.
ISSN (online)	1742-9994
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics