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

Grayson M. 2013 Chemistry masterclass. Nature 502, S49.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lubchenco J, Sutley N. 2010 Science policy. Proposed U.S. policy for ocean, coast, and Great Lakes stewardship. Science 328, 1485–1486.

A journal article with 3 authors

Depège N, Bellafiore S, Rochaix J-D. 2003 Role of chloroplast protein kinase Stt7 in LHCII phosphorylation and state transition in Chlamydomonas. Science 299, 1572–1575.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Chakraborty S, Ahmed M, Jackson TL, Thiemens MH. 2008 Experimental test of self-shielding in vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of CO. Science 321, 1328–1331.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Penner T, Lopez DC. 2015 De-Introducing the New Testament. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Baluska F. 2006 Cell-Cell Channels. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Richter S. 2010 Comments on Chapter 2 and 3. In Five Years of an Enlarged EU: A Positive Sum Game (eds F Keereman, I Szekely), pp. 55–60. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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

Andrew E. 2015 Iconic Boab Trees Trace Journeys Of Ancient Aboriginal People. 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. 2013 Intermodal Transportation: Results of GAO’s Survey on Air-Rail Connectivity (GAO-13-692SP, August 2013), an E-supplement to GAO-13-691.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zhu H. 2012 Outcomes of China Free Antiretroviral Treatment Program, 2003–2010. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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

Goff PA, Buchanan KS. 2017 The Wrong Role for The Police. New York Times, 21 June. , A23.

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