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

Pearson, H. (2003). Mystery virus slow to yield its identity as patient numbers rise. Nature 422, 364.

A journal article with 2 authors

Scanlon, J. D., and Lee, M. S. (2000). The Pleistocene serpent Wonambi and the early evolution of snakes. Nature 403, 416–420.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ditzen, M., Pellegrino, M., and Vosshall, L. B. (2008). Insect odorant receptors are molecular targets of the insect repellent DEET. Science 319, 1838–1842.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lo, U., Selvaraj, V., Plane, J. M., Chechneva, O. V., Otsu, K., and Deng, W. (2014). p38α (MAPK14) critically regulates the immunological response and the production of specific cytokines and chemokines in astrocytes. Sci. Rep. 4, 7405.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lißner, K., and Rug, W. (2016). Der Eurocode 5 für Deutschland Eurocode 5: Bemessung und Konstruktion von Holzbauten. Berlin, Germany: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Pe’er, J., and Singh, A. D. eds. (2014). Clinical Ophthalmic Oncology: Eyelid and Conjunctival Tumors. 2nd ed. 2014. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Abidin, A. F., Kolberg, M., and Hussain, A. (2015). “Integrating Twitter Traffic Information with Kalman Filter Models for Public Transportation Vehicle Arrival Time Prediction,” in Big-Data Analytics and Cloud Computing: Theory, Algorithms and Applications, eds. M. Trovati, R. Hill, A. Anjum, S. Y. Zhu, and L. Liu (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 67–82.

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). Can Gene Editing Provide a Solution to Global Hunger? 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 (2003). Special Education: Clearer Guidance Would Enhance Implementation of Federal Disciplinary Provisions. 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

Gunderson, C. A. (2017). The Moderating Effect of Type of Target on the Relationship between Collective Rumination and Displaced Aggression.

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

Whiteside, K. (2016). With City Passing By in a Blur, a Star Adds Yet Another Title. New York Times, F2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pearson, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Scanlon and Lee, 2000; Pearson, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Scanlon and Lee, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Lo 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