How to format your references using the Frontiers in Functional Plant Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Functional Plant Ecology. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Roses, A. D. (2000). Pharmacogenetics and the practice of medicine. Nature 405, 857–865.

A journal article with 2 authors

Parren, P. W. H. I., and Burton, D. R. (2009). Immunology. Two-in-one designer antibodies. Science 323, 1567–1568.

A journal article with 3 authors

Agarwala, S., Sanders, T. A., and Ragsdale, C. W. (2001). Sonic hedgehog control of size and shape in midbrain pattern formation. Science 291, 2147–2150.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hoppe, H.-G., Gocke, K., Koppe, R., and Begler, C. (2002). Bacterial growth and primary production along a north-south transect of the Atlantic Ocean. Nature 416, 168–171.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lipiansky, E. (2012). Electrical, Electronics, and Digital Hardware Essentials for Scientists and Engineers. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bangash, M. Y. H. (2007). Trauma - An Engineering Analysis: With Medical Case Studies Investigation. , eds. F. N. Bangash, Y. F. Al-Obaid, and T. Bangash Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hassett, B., and Tschinkel, Y. (2016). “Extremal Rays and Automorphisms of Holomorphic Symplectic Varieties,” in K3 Surfaces and Their Moduli Progress in Mathematics., eds. C. Faber, G. Farkas, and G. van der Geer (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 73–95.

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 Functional Plant Ecology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2017). Watch Live As NASA Makes A Major Exoplanet Announcement Today. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/watch-live-as-nasa-makes-a-major-exoplanet-announcement-today/ [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 (1982). GAO Reports Concerning Federal Student Financial Aid Programs. 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

Nellenbach, K. M. (2010). Contributions of oral language, problem-solving, and reading attitudes to young adolescents’ silent reading comprehension.

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

Murphy, M. J. O. (2014). Weary of War and Ready to Laugh. New York Times, C32.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Roses, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Roses, 2000; Parren and Burton, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Parren and Burton, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Hoppe et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Functional Plant Ecology
Abbreviation	Front. Plant Sci.
ISSN (online)	1664-462X
Scope	Plant Science