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

Humphries, C. (2012). Screening: Testing times. Nature 488, S8-9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Matthews, H. D., and Solomon, S. (2013). Atmosphere. Irreversible does not mean unavoidable. Science 340, 438–439.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kasting, J. F., Catling, D. C., and Zahnle, K. (2012). Atmospheric oxygenation and volcanism. Nature 487, E1; discussion E2.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Levine, J. A., Weisell, R., Chevassus, S., Martinez, C. D., Burlingame, B., and Coward, W. A. (2001). The work burden of women. Science 294, 812.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stewart, J. M. (2001). Managing for World Class Safety. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Grosjean, H. ed. (2005). Fine-Tuning of RNA Functions by Modification and Editing. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Pfetsch, F. R. (2013). “European Citizenship: A Concept of Interrelatedness and Conditionality,” in Citizenship as Cultural Flow: Structure, Agency and Power, ed. S. K. Mitra (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 87–106.

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 Cell Biology.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2015). Astronomers Witness Cosmic Fender Bender In The Asteroid Belt. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/asteroid-impact-snapped-astronomers/ (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 (1982). The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Should Consider Limiting and/or Charging User Fees for Civilian Consultations. 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

Taboada-Peña, R. (2017). A Self-Empowering Holistic Art-Based Model Designed to Promote Emotional Well-Being, Coping Skills, and Self-Esteem in Youth. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Rothenberg, B. (2016). Bouchard Is Out, but Her Concussion Suit From the 2015 Open Goes On. New York Times, B9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Humphries, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Humphries, 2012; Matthews and Solomon, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Matthews and Solomon, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Levine et al., 2001)

About the journal

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