How to format your references using the Frontiers in Plant Evolution and Development citation style

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

Powell, K. (2004). Back to basics: from industry to academia. Nature 430, 706–707.

A journal article with 2 authors

Doebeli, M., and Dieckmann, U. (2003). Speciation along environmental gradients. Nature 421, 259–264.

A journal article with 3 authors

Melendez, I., Grice, K., and Schwark, L. (2013). Exceptional preservation of Palaeozoic steroids in a diagenetic continuum. Sci. Rep. 3, 2768.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Thangaraj, K., Chaubey, G., Kivisild, T., Reddy, A. G., Singh, V. K., Rasalkar, A. A., et al. (2005). Reconstructing the origin of Andaman Islanders. Science 308, 996.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tan, Y. (2016). Artificial Immune System Applications in Computersecurity. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Castillo, O., and Melin, P. eds. (2015). Fuzzy Logic Augmentation of Nature-Inspired Optimization Metaheuristics: Theory and Applications. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Walsh, M. E., Theodorakakis, M. D., and Backe, S. (2016). “Redesigning a Core Function of Schools: A Systemic, Evidence-Based Approach to Student Support,” in Developing Community Schools, Community Learning Centers, Extended-service Schools and Multi-service Schools: International Exemplars for Practice, Policy and Research, eds. H. A. Lawson and D. van Veen (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 127–147.

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 Evolution and Development.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). The UK Ministry Of Defence Is Crashing Drones Into Airplanes To Test Safety. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/the-uk-ministry-of-defence-is-crashing-drones-into-airplanes-to-test-safety/ (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 (1974). Review of Certain Activities of the Kentucky Equine Education Programs. 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

Ulaganathan, M. N. (2016). Building a volunteered geographic information system (VGIS): A mobile application for disaster management. 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

Leland, J. (2017). Living the Bike Life. New York Times, MB7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Powell, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Doebeli and Dieckmann, 2003; Powell, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Doebeli and Dieckmann, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Thangaraj et al., 2005)

About the journal

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