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

Sadoulet, B. (2007). Particle dark matter in the universe: at the brink of discovery? Science 315, 61–63.

A journal article with 2 authors

Venters, B. J., and Pugh, B. F. (2013). Genomic organization of human transcription initiation complexes. Nature 502, 53–58.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lutz, W., Cuaresma, J. C., and Sanderson, W. (2008). Economics. The demography of educational attainment and economic growth. Science 319, 1047–1048.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ikebuchi, Y., Aoki, S., Honma, M., Hayashi, M., Sugamori, Y., Khan, M., et al. (2018). Coupling of bone resorption and formation by RANKL reverse signalling. Nature 561, 195–200.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Nicu, L., and Leïchlé, T. (2013). Micro- and Nanoelectromechanical Biosensors. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Horwitz, B. N., and Neiderhiser, J. M. eds. (2015). Gene-Environment Interplay in Interpersonal Relationships across the Lifespan. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Goto, K. (2007). “Parameters for detection of Alicyclobacillus and test methods,” in Alicyclobacillus: Thermophilic Acidophilic Bacilli, eds. A. Yokota, T. Fujii, and K. Goto (Tokyo: Springer Japan), 49–78.

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). Thunder God Vine Extract Makes Obese Mice Rapidly Shed The Pounds. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/plant-extract-makes-obese-mice-rapidly-shed-pounds/ (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 (1992). National Security: Papers Prepared for GAO Conference on Worldwide Threats. 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

McNamee, L. (2017). Best Practices in Higher Education Faculty Motivation. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine 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

Blecher, G. (2015). Berra’s Values Shape Museum’s Mission. New York Times, NJ10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sadoulet, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Sadoulet, 2007; Venters and Pugh, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Venters and Pugh, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Ikebuchi et al., 2018)

About the journal

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