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). An electoral lecture. Nature 420, 3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kirz, J., and Miao, J. (2012). David Sayre (1924-2012). Nature 484, 38.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jeong, K.-H., Kim, J., and Lee, L. P. (2006). Biologically inspired artificial compound eyes. Science 312, 557–561.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Li, X., Deng, Z. D., Sun, Y., Martinez, J. J., Fu, T., McMichael, G. A., et al. (2014). A 3D approximate maximum likelihood solver for localization of fish implanted with acoustic transmitters. Sci. Rep. 4, 7215.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brodsky, B. S., and Stanley, B. (2013). The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Primer. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Arezes, P. ed. (2016). Advances in Safety Management and Human Factors: Proceedings of the AHFE 2016 International Conference on Safety Management and Human Factors , July 27-31, 2016, Walt Disney World®, Florida, USA. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Rosenkrantz, G. S. (2013). “The Metaphysics of Persons,” in Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa, ed. J. Turri (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 55–72.

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

Andrew, D. (2017). If Atoms Are Mostly Empty Space, Why Do Objects Look And Feel Solid? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/if-atoms-are-mostly-empty-space-why-do-objects-look-and-feel-solid/ (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 (2006). National Transportation Safety Board: Progress Made, Yet Management Practices, Investigation Priorities, and Training Center Use Should Be Improved. 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

Fox, R. N. (2009). Interpreting architecture: A Krauszian approach. 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

Feeney, K. (2009). It’s Fresh, Local and Elegant. New York Times, NJ13.

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 (Smaglik, 2002; Kirz and Miao, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Kirz and Miao, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2014)

About the journal

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