How to format your references using the Frontiers in Plant-Microbe Interaction citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Plant-Microbe Interaction. 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

McBain, C. J. (2012). Neuroscience. Decoding the neuronal Tower of Babel. Science 338, 482–483.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yang, X., and Su, H. (2014). Cuprate-like electronic properties in superlattices with Ag(II)F₂ square sheet. Sci. Rep. 4, 5420.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kourtis, N., Nikoletopoulou, V., and Tavernarakis, N. (2012). Small heat-shock proteins protect from heat-stroke-associated neurodegeneration. Nature 490, 213–218.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Qiu, Y., He, X.-H., Zhang, Y., and Li, J.-X. (2014). Discriminative stimulus effects of the novel imidazoline I₂ receptor ligand CR4056 in rats. Sci. Rep. 4, 6605.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

van Bosse, J. G. (2002). Signaling in Telecommunication Networks. New York, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ross, A. H., and Abel, S. M. eds. (2011). The Juvenile Skeleton in Forensic Abuse Investigations. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Horányi, M., Sternovsky, Z., Lankton, M., Dumont, C., Gagnard, S., Gathright, D., et al. (2015). “The Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX) Onboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Mission,” in The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer Mission (LADEE), eds. R. C. Elphic and C. T. Russell (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 93–113.

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-Microbe Interaction.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). In The Path Of The Polar Bears: What It’s Like To Be An Arctic Scientist. 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 (1994). Committee on Governmental Affairs: Alleged Senate Compromise of NASA Complainant’s Identity. 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

Piekielek, J. A. (2009). Public wildlands at the U.S.-Mexico border: Where conservation, migration, and border enforcement collide. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

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 Sport Fails in the Most Important Category: Integrity. New York Times, D5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McBain, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (McBain, 2012; Yang and Su, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Yang and Su, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Qiu et al., 2014)

About the journal

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