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

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

Oreskes, N. (2004). Beyond the ivory tower. The scientific consensus on climate change. Science 306, 1686.

A journal article with 2 authors

Perner, J., and Ruffman, T. (2005). Psychology. Infants’ insight into the mind: how deep? Science 308, 214–216.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tritsch, N. X., Ding, J. B., and Sabatini, B. L. (2012). Dopaminergic neurons inhibit striatal output through non-canonical release of GABA. Nature 490, 262–266.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Nef, S., Verma-Kurvari, S., Merenmies, J., Vassalli, J.-D., Efstratiadis, A., Accili, D., et al. (2003). Testis determination requires insulin receptor family function in mice. Nature 426, 291–295.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schoon, N. (2016). Modern Islamic Banking. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Flesca, S. (2011). Repairing and Querying Databases under Aggregate Constraints., eds. F. Furfaro and F. Parisi. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Zimmermann, R., Marchal-Crespo, L., Lambercy, O., Fluet, M.-C., Metzger, J.-C., Edelmann, J., et al. (2013). “What’s Your Next Move? Detecting Movement Intention for Stroke Rehabilitation,” in Brain-Computer Interface Research: A State-of-the-Art Summary, eds. C. Guger, B. Z. Allison, and G. Edlinger (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 23–37.

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 Pharmacology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Lithium-Air: A Battery Breakthrough Explained. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/lithium-air-battery-breakthrough-explained/ (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 (1999). Amtrak: Contracting Improprieties by Chief Engineer. 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

Hertzog, L. (2013). Development and implementation of a prenatal postpartum depression education program for nurse practitioner students at California State University Long Beach. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Gustines, G. G. (2010). A World Of Words Reinvented In Pictures. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Oreskes, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Oreskes, 2004; Perner and Ruffman, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Perner and Ruffman, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Nef et al., 2003)

About the journal

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