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

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

Alerstam, T. (2006). Conflicting evidence about long-distance animal navigation. Science 313, 791–794.

A journal article with 2 authors

O’Connell, P. A., and McKenna, G. B. (2005). Rheological measurements of the thermoviscoelastic response of ultrathin polymer films. Science 307, 1760–1763.

A journal article with 3 authors

Culley, A. I., Lang, A. S., and Suttle, C. A. (2003). High diversity of unknown picorna-like viruses in the sea. Nature 424, 1054–1057.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kohl, J., Babayan, B. M., Rubinstein, N. D., Autry, A. E., Marin-Rodriguez, B., Kapoor, V., et al. (2018). Functional circuit architecture underlying parental behaviour. Nature 556, 326–331.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sengupta, D. L., and Liepa, V. V. (2005). Applied Electromagnetics and Electromagnetic Compatibility. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Eigen, S. (2014). Weakly Wandering Sequences in Ergodic Theory., eds. A. Hajian, Y. Ito, and V. Prasad. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

A chapter in an edited book

Rondina, M. T., and Schwertz, H. (2016). “Morphogenesis of Platelets in the Circulation,” in Molecular and Cellular Biology of Platelet Formation: Implications in Health and Disease, eds. H. Schulze and J. Italiano (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 115–129.

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 Physiology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014). Microbial Enzymes “Eat” Cocaine, Could Be Novel Treatment For Abuse. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/microbial-enzymes-eat-cocaine-could-be-novel-treatment-abuse/ (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 (1998). National Airspace System: FAA Has Implemented Some Free Flight Initiatives, but Challenges Remain. 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

Shackelford, V. (2014). Mary’s mandala story: Images of chaos in mandala psychology. Carpinteria, CA: Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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

Poniewozik, J. (2017). Close Encounters of the Human Kind. New York Times, C6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Alerstam, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (O’Connell and McKenna, 2005; Alerstam, 2006).

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

Two authors: (O’Connell and McKenna, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Kohl et al., 2018)

About the journal

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