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

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

Hamann, T. (2014). Chemistry. Perovskites take lead in solar hydrogen race. Science 345, 1566–1567.

A journal article with 2 authors

Williams, E. J., and Hurst, L. D. (2000). The proteins of linked genes evolve at similar rates. Nature 407, 900–903.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sommer, M. O. A., Dantas, G., and Church, G. M. (2009). Functional characterization of the antibiotic resistance reservoir in the human microflora. Science 325, 1128–1131.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ferguson, N. M., Ghani, A. C., Donnelly, C. A., Hagenaars, T. J., and Anderson, R. M. (2002). Estimating the human health risk from possible BSE infection of the British sheep flock. Nature 415, 420–424.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Courant, R., and McShane, E. J. (1988). Differential and Integral Calculus. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ghosh, T. K. (2011). Energy Resources and Systems: Volume 2: Renewable Resources., ed. M. A. Prelas. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Cortina, S., Mayer, N., Renault, A., and Barafort, B. (2014). “Towards a Process Assessment Model for Management System Standards,” in Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination: 14th International Conference, SPICE 2014, Vilnius, Lithuania, November 4-6, 2014, Proceedings, eds. A. Mitasiunas, T. Rout, R. V. O’Connor, and A. Dorling (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 36–47.

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 Biotechnology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2015). Huge Announcement From SpaceX Coming Soon, Possibly Regarding A Future Mars Mission. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/huge-spacex-announcement-coming-soon-could-be-mars-mission/ (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 (1998). Executive Guide: Leading Practices in Capital Decision-Making (Supersedes AIMD-98-110). 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

Pierce, Z. D. (2016). The relationship between nursing instructors’ transformational leadership behaviors in the clinical learning environment and associate degree nursing students’ communication apprehension. Minneapolis, MN: Capella University.

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

Pilon, M. (2014). U.S.T.A. Faces Suit Over Sabbath Schedule. New York Times, D4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hamann, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Williams and Hurst, 2000; Hamann, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Williams and Hurst, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Ferguson et al., 2002)

About the journal

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