How to format your references using the Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. 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

Aldhous, P. (2000). Global warming could be bad news for Arctic ozone layer. Nature 404, 531.

A journal article with 2 authors

Steele, B. C., and Heinzel, A. (2001). Materials for fuel-cell technologies. Nature 414, 345–352.

A journal article with 3 authors

Meier, P., Finch, A., and Evan, G. (2000). Apoptosis in development. Nature 407, 796–801.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Turner, J., Lachlan-Cope, T. A., Colwell, S., Marshall, G. J., and Connolley, W. M. (2006). Significant warming of the Antarctic winter troposphere. Science 311, 1914–1917.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lewis, S. (2016). Positive Psychology and Change. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Bramer, M. ed. (2008). Artificial Intelligence in Theory and Practice II: IFIP 20th World Computer Congress, TC 12: IFIP AI 2008 Stream, September 7-10, 2008, Milano, Italy. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Trezzi, J.-P., Vlassis, N., and Hiller, K. (2015). “The Role of Metabolomics in the Study of Cancer Biomarkers and in the Development of Diagnostic Tools,” in Advances in Cancer Biomarkers: From biochemistry to clinic for a critical revision, ed. R. Scatena (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 41–57.

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 Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Particle Physics Discovery Raises Hope For A Theory Of Everything. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/particle-physics-discovery-raises-hope-theory-everything/ (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 (2008). Information Technology: Federal Laws, Regulations, and Mandatory Standards to Securing Private Sector Information Technology Systems and Data in Critical Infrastructure Sectors. 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

Oakes, A. C. (2006). States in Crisis: How Governments Respond to Domestic Unrest. Columbus, OH: Ohio State 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 Upholds Child Pornography Law, Despite Free Speech Concerns. New York Times, A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Aldhous, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Aldhous, 2000; Steele and Heinzel, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Steele and Heinzel, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Turner et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
ISSN (online)	2296-4185
Scope	Biotechnology Bioengineering Biomedical Engineering Histology