How to format your references using the Frontiers in Microbiology citation style

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

McBride, H. (2003). Young scientist: women mentoring women. Nature 426, 588.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dennis, C., and Surridge, C. (2000). Arabidopsis thaliana genome. Introduction. Nature 408, 791.

A journal article with 3 authors

Goodman, D. B., Church, G. M., and Kosuri, S. (2013). Causes and effects of N-terminal codon bias in bacterial genes. Science 342, 475–479.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bacaj, T., Tevlin, M., Lu, Y., and Shaham, S. (2008). Glia are essential for sensory organ function in C. elegans. Science 322, 744–747.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Snopek, L. (2012). The Complete Guide to Portfolio Construction and Management. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Kato, T. ed. (2008). Liquid Crystalline Functional Assemblies and Their Supramolecular Structures. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Reichenbächer, M., and Popp, J. (2012). “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR),” in Challenges in Molecular Structure Determination, ed. J. Popp (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 215–312.

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 Microbiology.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014). Bizarre Ostrich-Like Dino Solves 50-Year-Old Mystery. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dino-was-part-ostrich-part-sailback/ (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 (1978). Determination of Costs Relating to the Environmental Education Act. 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

Collins, J. D. (2012). Answers in diagenesis: Assessing mussel shell diagenesis in the modern vadose zone at Lyon’s Bluff (22OK520), northeast Mississippi. Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi 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

Barnes, B., and Creswell, J. (2017). Reeling From Scandal, Weinstein’s Studio Gets Financial Lifeline From Equity Firm. New York Times, A11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McBride, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Dennis and Surridge, 2000; McBride, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Dennis and Surridge, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Bacaj et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Microbiology
Abbreviation	Front. Microbiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-302X
Scope	Microbiology Microbiology (medical)