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

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

Burtis, K. C. (2002). Development. Doublesex in the middle. Science 297, 1135–1136.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ong, N. P., and Cava, R. J. (2004). Physics. Electronic frustration on a triangular lattice. Science 305, 52–53.

A journal article with 3 authors

Akihiko, T., Morioka, Y., and Behera, S. K. (2014). Role of climate variability in the heatstroke death rates of Kanto region in Japan. Sci. Rep. 4, 5655.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ule, A., Schram, A., Riedl, A., and Cason, T. N. (2009). Indirect punishment and generosity toward strangers. Science 326, 1701–1704.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

van der Heide, P. (2014). Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Artmann, G. M., and Chien, S. eds. (2008). Bioengineering in Cell and Tissue Research. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Meleth, A. D., Raiji, V. R., Krishnadev, N., and Chew, E. Y. (2011). “Therapy of Nonexudative Age-Related Macular Degeneration,” in Age-related Macular Degeneration Diagnosis and Treatment, eds. A. C. Ho and C. D. Regillo (New York, NY: Springer), 65–78.

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 Physiology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2013). Traces of Neanderthal Virus DNA Found in Modern Human Genomes. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/traces-neanderthal-virus-dna-found-modern-human-genomes/ (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 (2009). Information Technology: Management and Oversight of Projects Totaling Billions of Dollars Need Attention. 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

Willis, T. Y. (2012). Rare but there: An intersectional exploration of the experiences and outcomes of Black women who studied abroad through community college programs. 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

Koblin, J. (2017). FX Plans a Commercial-Free Service With Comcast. New York Times, B6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Burtis, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Burtis, 2002; Ong and Cava, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Ong and Cava, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Ule et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Physiology
Abbreviation	Front. Physiol.
ISSN (online)	1664-042X
Scope	Physiology Physiology (medical)