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

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

Kondro, W. (2000). CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES: Funding of 2000 Slots Sets Off Musical Chairs. Science 288, 2112.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhang, B., and Cao, C. (2015). Policy: Four gaps in China’s new environmental law. Nature 517, 433–434.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chin, G., Marathe, T., and Roberts, L. (2011). Population. Doom or vroom? Introduction. Science 333, 538–539.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhao, X., Xiao, B., Fletcher, A. J., Thomas, K. M., Bradshaw, D., and Rosseinsky, M. J. (2004). Hysteretic adsorption and desorption of hydrogen by nanoporous metal-organic frameworks. Science 306, 1012–1015.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Beneke, D., Peters, M., Glasser, D., and Hildebrandt, D. (2012). Understanding Distillation Using Column Profile Maps. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Siddharthan, N., and Narayanan, K. eds. (2013). Human Capital and Development: The Indian Experience. 2nd ed. 2013. New Delhi: Springer India.

A chapter in an edited book

Xi, W., Bi, H., and He, B. (2012). “Forest Landscape Restoration in China,” in A Goal-Oriented Approach to Forest Landscape Restoration World Forests., eds. J. Stanturf, P. Madsen, and D. Lamb (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 65–92.

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 Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). The Riddle Behind Zebra Stripes. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/riddle-behind-zebra-stripes/ [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 (1981). S. 1657 and H.R. 4564, Research and Development Acts. 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

Loretz, N. (2009). Human trafficking: Identification, education, and awareness: A grant proposal.

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

Kelly, S. (1992). There’s Nothing Like a Dame. New York Times, 729.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kondro, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Kondro, 2000; Zhang and Cao, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Zhang and Cao, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Zhao et al., 2004)

About the journal

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