How to format your references using the Frontiers in Plant Nutrition citation style

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

McGehee, M. D. (2011). Applied physics. Paradigm shifts in dye-sensitized solar cells. Science 334, 607–608.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schofield, R. M. S., and Nesson, M. H. (2003). Comment on “High abrasion resistance with sparse mineralization: copper biomineral in worm jaws.” Science 301, 1049; author reply 1049.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bernhard, H., Fischbacher, U., and Fehr, E. (2006). Parochial altruism in humans. Nature 442, 912–915.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Jia, Y., Yu, G., He, N., Zhan, X., Fang, H., Sheng, W., et al. (2014). Spatial and decadal variations in inorganic nitrogen wet deposition in China induced by human activity. Sci. Rep. 4, 3763.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (2013). Funding Atlas 2012. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Kibos, A. S., Knight, B. P., Essebag, V., Fishberger, S. B., Slevin, M., and Țintoiu, I. C. eds. (2014). Cardiac Arrhythmias: From Basic Mechanism to State-of-the-Art Management. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gibson, J. M., Brammer, A. S., Davidson, C. A., Folley, T., Launay, F. J. P., and Thomsen, J. T. W. (2013). “Burden of Disease from Indoor Air Pollution,” in Environmental Burden of Disease Assessment, eds. A. Brammer, C. Davidson, T. Folley, F. Launay, and J. Thomsen (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 109–132.

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 Nutrition.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016). 2016: The year In Space And Astronomy. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/2016-the-year-in-space-and-astronomy/ (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 (1972). Controls Over Funds Available to the District of Columbia Public Schools. 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

Williams, B. (2017). The Impact on Reunification for Families with Incarcerated Parents: A Policy Analysis of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. 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

Chapman, M. M. (2011). A Year in the Slow Lane in a ’30 Ford. New York Times, AU1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McGehee, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Schofield and Nesson, 2003; McGehee, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Schofield and Nesson, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Jia et al., 2014)

About the journal

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