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

Smaglik, P. (2002). A chemical imbalance. Nature 418, 3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Day, M., and Morris, R. G. (2001). Memory consolidation and NMDA receptors: discrepancy between genetic and pharmacological approaches. Science 293, 755.

A journal article with 3 authors

Siveter, D. J., Williams, M., and Waloszek, D. (2001). A phosphatocopid crustacean with appendages from the Lower Cambrian. Science 293, 479–481.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Schneider, C. M., Yazdani, N., Araújo, N. A. M., Havlin, S., and Herrmann, H. J. (2013). Towards designing robust coupled networks. Sci. Rep. 3, 1969.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hendrick, J. (2010). Law and Ethics in Children’s Nursing. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Villiers, E.-M. de, and Hausen, H. Z. eds. (2009). TT Viruses: The Still Elusive Human Pathogens. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Snickars, F., Blaus, J., Eriksson, T., and Reitberger, G. (2015). “On the Economic and Social Impacts of University Research,” in New Perspectives on Internationalization and Competitiveness: Integrating Economics, Innovation and Higher Education, ed. E. Ullberg (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 47–71.

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

Andrews, R. (2016). 7,000-Year-Old Lost Egyptian City Found By Archaeologists. 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 (2012). Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education: Survey of Federal Programs (GAO-12-110SP, January 2012), an E-supplement to GAO-12-108. 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

Yahyai, S. (2013). Optimization of a method for testing ballast water for enterococci and an investigation on the occurrence of antibiotic resistance in vibrio cholerae. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park.

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

George, T. (2016). Thumbelina’s Secret Architect. New York Times, A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Day and Morris, 2001; Smaglik, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Day and Morris, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Schneider et al., 2013)

About the journal

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