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

Fujita T. 2006 Virology. Sensing viral RNA amid your own. Science 314, 935–936.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barkai N, Leibler S. 2000 Circadian clocks limited by noise. Nature 403, 267–268.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hristov TS, Miller SD, Friehe CA. 2003 Dynamical coupling of wind and ocean waves through wave-induced air flow. Nature 422, 55–58.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Nicodeme E et al. 2010 Suppression of inflammation by a synthetic histone mimic. Nature 468, 1119–1123.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rehder D. 2010 Chemistry in Space. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Loriaux L, editor. 2014 Endocrine Emergencies: Recognition and Treatment. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Nishida T. 2011 Towards Conversational Artifacts. In Brain Informatics: International Conference, BI 2011, Lanzhou, China, September 7-9, 2011. Proceedings (eds B Hu, J Liu, L Chen, N Zhong), pp. 22–27. 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

Hale T. 2016 New Claim Adds More Madness To The Bermuda Triangle Theories. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-claim-adds-more-madness-to-the-bermuda-triangle-theories/ (accessed on 30 October 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. 1993 Exiting Program Improvement.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zhang H. 2008 Studies of Zeolite-Based Artificial Photosynthetic Systems. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Kelly M. 1992 Being Whatever It Takes to Win Election. New York Times, 23 August. , 41.

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

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