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

Chisari, F. V. (2005). Unscrambling hepatitis C virus-host interactions. Nature 436, 930–932.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nguyen, J. H., and Holmes, N. C. (2004). Melting of iron at the physical conditions of the Earth’s core. Nature 427, 339–342.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schuch, R., Nelson, D., and Fischetti, V. A. (2002). A bacteriolytic agent that detects and kills Bacillus anthracis. Nature 418, 884–889.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kuper, J., Llamas, A., Hecht, H.-J., Mendel, R. R., and Schwarz, G. (2004). Structure of the molybdopterin-bound Cnx1G domain links molybdenum and copper metabolism. Nature 430, 803–806.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schroeder, K., Thompson, T., Frith, K., and Pencheon, D. (2012). Sustainable Healthcare. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Lee, T.-K. (2015). Fundamentals of Lead-Free Solder Interconnect Technology: From Microstructures to Reliability. , eds. T. R. Bieler, C.-U. Kim, and H. Ma Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Prieto, P. A., Prieto, P. A., and Hall, C. A. S. (2013). “Calculating the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI or EROI) for Spain’s Solar Photovoltaic Energy,” in Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment SpringerBriefs in Energy., ed. C. A. S. Hall (New York, NY: Springer), 39–46.

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

Fang, J. (2015). New 4D Ultrasound Scans Reveal Effects of Smoking on a Fetus. IFLScience.

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 (2008). Chemical Assessments: Low Productivity and New Interagency Review Process Limit the Usefulness and Credibility of EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System. 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

Crosby, A. E. (2012). A phenomenological heuristic study of psychosocial factors that contribute to African American females’ HIV seroconversion.

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

Kantor, J., Abrams, R., and Haberman, M. (2017). A First Daughter Assembling a Vast Portfolio. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chisari, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Nguyen and Holmes, 2004; Chisari, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Nguyen and Holmes, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Kuper et al., 2004)

About the journal

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