How to format your references using the Interface Focus citation style

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

Karp PD. 2001 Pathway databases: a case study in computational symbolic theories. Science 293, 2040–2044.

A journal article with 2 authors

King DA, Thomas SM. 2007 Big lessons for a healthy future. Nature 449, 791–792.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dodds PS, Muhamad R, Watts DJ. 2003 An experimental study of search in global social networks. Science 301, 827–829.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Mameli M, Balland B, Luján R, Lüscher C. 2007 Rapid synthesis and synaptic insertion of GluR2 for mGluR-LTD in the ventral tegmental area. Science 317, 530–533.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dunnivant FM, Anders E. 2005 A Basic Introduction to Pollutant Fate and Transport. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Maharatna K, Dalapati GK, Banerjee PK, Mallick AK, Mukherjee M, editors. 2015 Computational Advancement in Communication Circuits and Systems: Proceedings of ICCACCS 2014. New Delhi: Springer India.

A chapter in an edited book

Oka Y, Koshizuka S, Ishiwatari Y, Yamaji A. 2010 Plant Startup and Stability. In Super Light Water Reactors and Super Fast Reactors: Supercritical-Pressure Light Water Cooled Reactors (eds S Koshizuka, Y Ishiwatari, A Yamaji), pp. 269–347. Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 Interface Focus.

Blog post

Fang J. 2016 Reproduction Declines With Age In Female Turtles Too. IFLScience.

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. 1985 Biotechnology: The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biotechnology Research Efforts.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gu P. 2017 Advanced Nonlinear Control and Estimation Methods for AC Power Generation Systems. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

McKINLEY JC Jr. 2017 New York City Scraps 644,000 Old Warrants for Minor Offenses. New York Times, 10 August. , A1.

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	Interface Focus
Abbreviation	Interface Focus
ISSN (print)	2042-8898
ISSN (online)	2042-8901
Scope	Biochemistry Biophysics Biotechnology Bioengineering Biomedical Engineering Biomaterials