How to format your references using the Frontiers of Biogeography citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Zimmerman, E. (2004) Recruiters and academia. Nature 431, 1022.
A journal article with 2 authors
Mathôt, S. & Theeuwes, J. (2013) A reinvestigation of the reference frame of the tilt-adaptation aftereffect. Scientific reports 3, 1152.
A journal article with 3 authors
Sword, G.A., Lorch, P.D. & Gwynne, D.T. (2005) Insect behaviour: migratory bands give crickets protection. Nature 433, 703.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Liu, G., Li, Z., Wei, Y., Lin, Y., Yang, C. & Liu, T. (2014) Direct detection of FoxP3 expression in thymic double-negative CD4-CD8- cells by flow cytometry. Scientific reports 4, 5781.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Scot, L. (2010) The Simplified Guide to Not-for-Profit Accounting, Formation, and Reporting. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Grossmann, G. & Zardini, C. eds. (2011) The ELFNET Book on Failure Mechanisms, Testing Methods, and Quality Issues of Lead-Free Solder Interconnects. Springer, London.
A chapter in an edited book
Stessl, M., Noe, C.R. & Winkler, J. (2012) Off-Target Effects and Safety Aspects of Phosphorothioate Oligonucleotides. In: From Nucleic Acids Sequences to Molecular Medicine. (ed. by V.A. Erdmann and J. Barciszewski), pp. 67–83, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

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 of Biogeography.

Blog post
Hale, T. (2017) Super Rare Wildcat Spotted In The Wild. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/super-rare-wildcat-spotted-in-the-wild/

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 (1987) Additional Costs to Government: Reflagging Kuwaiti Ships and Protecting Them in the Persian Gulf. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Clarke, P.N. (2008) Program evaluation: A study to evaluate the effectiveness of an alternative education program in a rural county of a mid-Atlantic U.S. state. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.

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
Gustines, G.G. (2016) Comic Book Looks at Harsh Life in Syria. New York Times,. 3 October:. p. C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zimmerman 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Zimmerman 2004, Mathôt and Theeuwes 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Mathôt and Theeuwes 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Liu et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers of Biogeography
ISSN (online)1948-6596
Scope

Other styles