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

Anglin, J. (2000). Why trapped atoms are attractive. Nature 406, 29–30.

A journal article with 2 authors

Richardson, S. H., and Shirey, S. B. (2008). Continental mantle signature of Bushveld magmas and coeval diamonds. Nature 453, 910–913.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lawrence, T., Hageman, T., and Balkwill, F. (2007). Cancer. Sex, cytokines, and cancer. Science 317, 51–52.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Teixeira, A., Tahiri-Alaoui, A., West, S., Thomas, B., Ramadass, A., Martianov, I., et al. (2004). Autocatalytic RNA cleavage in the human beta-globin pre-mRNA promotes transcription termination. Nature 432, 526–530.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sedivy, J., and Carlson, G. (2011). Sold on Language. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Brodnik, A., and Vahrenhold, J. eds. (2015). Informatics in Schools. Curricula, Competences, and Competitions: 8th International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives, ISSEP 2015, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 28 - October 1, 2015, Proceedings., 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Donelli, A., Massa, A., Oliveri, G., Pastorino, M., and Randazzo, A. (2010). “The Use of Differential Evolution for the Solution of Electromagnetic Inverse Scattering Problems,” in Differential Evolution in Electromagnetics, eds. A. Qing and C. K. Lee (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 107–131.

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

Carpineti, A. (2016). Watch An Entire Lake Disappear Down A Hole. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/watch-lava-tube-draining-lake/ (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 (1988). Aviation Security: Corrective Actions Underway, but Better Inspection Guidance Still Needed. 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

Williams, C. (2013). It’s not a beauty pageant!: An examination of leadership development through Alaska native pageants. 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

Wagner, J. (2017). Beefier Syndergaard Envisions a Fastball With Even More Heft. New York Times, D5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Anglin, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Anglin, 2000; Richardson and Shirey, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Richardson and Shirey, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Teixeira et al., 2004)

About the journal

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