How to format your references using the Frontiers in Cardiovascular and Smooth Muscle Pharmacology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Cardiovascular and Smooth Muscle Pharmacology. 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

Davidson, E. H. (2012). Retrospective. Roy J. Britten (1919-2012). Science 335, 1183.

A journal article with 2 authors

Subrahmanian, V. S., and Dickerson, J. (2009). Computer science. What can virtual worlds and games do for national security? Science 326, 1201–1202.

A journal article with 3 authors

Patt, A. G., Ogallo, L., and Hellmuth, M. (2007). Sustainability. Learning from 10 years of climate outlook forums in Africa. Science 318, 49–50.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li, Q., Dimaki, A., Popov, M., Psakhie, S. G., and Popov, V. L. (2014). Kinetics of the coefficient of friction of elastomers. Sci. Rep. 4, 5795.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Steele, D. (2011). From Therapist to Coach. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Powietrzynska, M., and Tobin, K. eds. (2016). Mindfulness and Educating Citizens for Everyday Life. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

A chapter in an edited book

Sasso, M., Chiappini, G., Rossi, M., and Amodio, D. (2015). “Strain Assessment in Cracked Sheet Metals by Optical Grid Method,” in Advancement of Optical Methods in Experimental Mechanics, Volume 3: Proceedings of the 2014 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics, eds. H. Jin, C. Sciammarella, S. Yoshida, and L. Lamberti (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 39–46.

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 Cardiovascular and Smooth Muscle Pharmacology.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2016). “Us Versus Them” Root Of Racist Behavior Found In Old World Primates. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/us-versus-them-root-racist-behavior-found-old-world-primates/ (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 (2000). Federal Chief Information Officer: Leadership Needed to Confront Serious Challenges and Emerging Issues. 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

Teague, H. L. (2017). A Mixed Methods Study of Online Course Facilitators’ Perceptions of Mobile Technology, Design, and TPaCK Affordances. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine 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

St. John Kelly, E. (1994). Groups Trace Soldiers’ Footsteps. New York Times, 514.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Davidson, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Subrahmanian and Dickerson, 2009; Davidson, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Subrahmanian and Dickerson, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Cardiovascular and Smooth Muscle Pharmacology
Abbreviation	Front. Pharmacol.
ISSN (online)	1663-9812
Scope	Pharmacology (medical) Pharmacology