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

Alberts, B. (2003). DNA replication and recombination. Nature 421, 431–435.

A journal article with 2 authors

Walck, J., and Dixon, K. (2009). Time to future-proof plants in storage. Nature 462, 721.

A journal article with 3 authors

Simiyu, K., Daar, A. S., and Singer, P. A. (2010). Global health. Stagnant health technologies in Africa. Science 330, 1483–1484.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Gomendio, M., Malo, A. F., Soler, A. J., Fernández-Santos, M. R., Esteso, M. C., García, A. J., et al. (2006). Male fertility and sex ratio at birth in red deer. Science 314, 1445–1447.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Taber, D. F. (2008). Organic Synthesis: State of the 2005-2007. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Zohary, T., Sukenik, A., Berman, T., and Nishri, A. eds. (2014). Lake Kinneret: Ecology and Management. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Sarfaty, J. (2012). “Civil Society and Education Advocacy in Ecuador,” in Campaigning for “Education for All”: Histories, Strategies and Outcomes of Transnational Advocacy Coalitions in Education, eds. A. Verger, M. Novelli, K. Mundy, A. Eickelberg, L. Grant, S. Hilgersom, et al. (Rotterdam: SensePublishers), 51–64.

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

Fang, J. (2014). Brown Bears Enjoy Oral Sex. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/brown-bears-enjoy-oral-sex/ [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 (2016). Space Acquisitions: Challenges Facing DOD as it Changes Approaches to Space Acquisitions. 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

Cao, Q. (2013). East Asian backpacker tourists’ motivations for participating in backpacking.

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

Davis, J. H., Rappeport, A., Kelly, K., and Abrams, R. (2017). White House’s Tax Plan Puts Business at the Fore. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Alberts, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Alberts, 2003; Walck and Dixon, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Walck and Dixon, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Gomendio et al., 2006)

About the journal

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

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