How to format your references using the Frontiers in B Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in B Cell Biology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Cohen, J. (2015). AIDS. No end in sight. Science 349, 230–231.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tumer, E. C., and Brainard, M. S. (2007). Performance variability enables adaptive plasticity of “crystallized” adult birdsong. Nature 450, 1240–1244.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mihalcescu, I., Hsing, W., and Leibler, S. (2004). Resilient circadian oscillator revealed in individual cyanobacteria. Nature 430, 81–85.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Rein, M., Favrod, V. D., Hou, C., Khudiyev, T., Stolyarov, A., Cox, J., et al. (2018). Diode fibres for fabric-based optical communications. Nature 560, 214–218.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sheriff, R. E., and Hu, Y. F. (2001). Mobile Satellite Communication Networks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Childs, J. E., Mackenzie, J. S., and Richt, J. A. eds. (2007). Wildlife and Emerging Zoonotic Diseases: The Biology, Circumstances and Consequences of Cross-Species Transmission. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Mohan, J., and Breeze, B. (2016). “The Supply of Philanthropy in Relation to Beneficiary Demand,” in The Logic of Charity: Great Expectations in Hard Times, ed. B. Breeze (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK), 67–90.

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 B Cell Biology.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014). How Well You Do In School Reflects Dozens Of Genetic Traits. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-well-you-do-school-reflects-dozens-genetic-traits/ (Accessed October 30, 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 (1992). Federal Research: SEMATECH’s Technological Progress and Proposed R&D Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lawary, Y. (2014). A Comparison of How Three Four-Year University Teacher Education Programs Prepare Pre-Service Teachers to Use Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. St. Charles, MO: Lindenwood University.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2008). Court Allows Suit Against Drug Maker. New York Times, A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cohen, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Tumer and Brainard, 2007; Cohen, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Tumer and Brainard, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Rein et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in B Cell Biology
Abbreviation	Front. Immunol.
ISSN (online)	1664-3224
Scope