How to format your references using the Frontiers in Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Tawfik, D. S. (2006). Biochemistry. Loop grafting and the origins of enzyme species. Science 311, 475–476.
A journal article with 2 authors
Megens, M., and Aizenberg, J. (2003). Capillary attraction: like-charged particles at liquid interfaces. Nature 424, 1014; discussion 1014.
A journal article with 3 authors
Peltier, W. R., Liu, Y., and Crowley, J. W. (2007). Snowball Earth prevention by dissolved organic carbon remineralization. Nature 450, 813–818.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Thirumalai, K., Richey, J. N., Quinn, T. M., and Poore, R. Z. (2014). Globigerinoides ruber morphotypes in the Gulf of Mexico: a test of null hypothesis. Sci. Rep. 4, 6018.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Van Fleet, P. J. (2008). Discrete Wavelet Transformations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Střelcová, K., Mátyás, C., Kleidon, A., Lapin, M., Matejka, F., Blaženec, M., et al. eds. (2009). Bioclimatology and Natural Hazards. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Irwin, M. L. (2011). “Obesity and Cancer: Epidemiology,” in Insulin Resistance and Cancer: Epidemiology, Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Implications, ed. I. G. Fantus (New York, NY: Springer), 101–110.

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 Metabolism and Chemodiversity.

Blog post
Davis, J. (2016). Babies Born By Caesarean More Likely To Develop Obesity. 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 (2014). Tobacco Product Regulation: Most FDA Spending Funded Public Education, Regulatory Science, and Compliance and Enforcement Activities. 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
Austin, C. A. (2013). Intravenous Exposure of Pregnant Mice to Silver Nanoparticles: Silver Tissue Distribution and Effects in Maternal and Extra-Embryonic Tissues and Embryos. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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
Schwartz, J. (2016). Max Ritvo, 25, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight. New York Times, A14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tawfik, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Megens and Aizenberg, 2003; Tawfik, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Megens and Aizenberg, 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Thirumalai et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleFrontiers in Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
AbbreviationFront. Plant Sci.
ISSN (online)1664-462X
ScopePlant Science

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