How to format your references using the Frontiers in Plant Biophysics and Modeling citation style

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

Erwin, D. H. (2015). David M. Raup (1933-2015). Nature 524, 36.

A journal article with 2 authors

Calka, A., and Wexler, D. (2002). Mechanical milling assisted by electrical discharge. Nature 419, 147–151.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen, Z., Yang, H., and Pavletich, N. P. (2008). Mechanism of homologous recombination from the RecA-ssDNA/dsDNA structures. Nature 453, 489–484.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Swanson-Wagner, R. A., DeCook, R., Jia, Y., Bancroft, T., Ji, T., Zhao, X., et al. (2009). Paternal dominance of trans-eQTL influences gene expression patterns in maize hybrids. Science 326, 1118–1120.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tripathi, N., Singh, R. S., and Hills, C. D. (2016). Reclamation of Mine-Impacted Land for Ecosystem Recovery. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Fang, A. C. (2015). Text Genres and Registers: The Computation of Linguistic Features., ed. J. Cao. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Good, R. (2012). “Why the Study of Pseudoscience Should Be Included in Nature of Science Studies,” in Advances in Nature of Science Research: Concepts and Methodologies, ed. M. S. Khine (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 97–106.

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 Plant Biophysics and Modeling.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014). Vaccine Means Safe Sex For Koalas. IFLScience.

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). Federal Highway Administration: Parts and Accessories Necessary for Safe Operations, Lighting Devices, Reflectors, and Electrical Equipment. 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

Yu, H. (2009). Parasitism of subterranean termites (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae: Termitidae) by entomopathogenic nematodes (Nematoda: Steinernematidae: Heterorhabditidae). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

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

Billard, M. (2010). Jodi Arnold Expands Her Empire. New York Times, E5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Erwin, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Calka and Wexler, 2002; Erwin, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Calka and Wexler, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Swanson-Wagner et al., 2009)

About the journal

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