How to format your references using the Frontiers in Plant Genetics and Genomics citation style

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

Crow, J. M. (2012). Obesity: insensitive issue. Nature 486, S12-3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Long, M. A., and Fee, M. S. (2008). Using temperature to analyse temporal dynamics in the songbird motor pathway. Nature 456, 189–194.

A journal article with 3 authors

Drell, S. D., Shultz, G. P., and Andreasen, S. P. (2012). Nuclear safety. A safer nuclear enterprise. Science 336, 1236.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ishiba, T., Nagahara, M., Nakagawa, T., Sato, T., Ishikawa, T., Uetake, H., et al. (2014). Periostin suppression induces decorin secretion leading to reduced breast cancer cell motility and invasion. Sci. Rep. 4, 7069.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Quinn, J. F. (2013). Dementia. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Meadows, G. G. ed. (2005). Integration/Interaction of Oncologic Growth. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Agarwal, R. P., Perera, K., and Pinelas, S. (2011). “Complex Functions,” in An Introduction to Complex Analysis, eds. K. Perera and S. Pinelas (Boston, MA: Springer US), 28–36.

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 Genetics and Genomics.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2015). Why Are People So Curious? 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 (2004). Aviation Security: Factors Could Limit the Effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration’s Efforts to Secure Aerial Advertising Operations. 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

Murdock, J. M. (2017). Lethe and the Twin Bodhisattvas of Forgiveness and Forgetfulness.

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

Vecsey, G. (2011). A Cosmic Comeuppance for the Dodgers. New York Times, B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Crow, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Long and Fee, 2008; Crow, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Long and Fee, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Ishiba et al., 2014)

About the journal

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

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