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

Bruneau, B. G. (2008). The developmental genetics of congenital heart disease. Nature 451, 943–948.

A journal article with 2 authors

Trujillo, C. A., and Sheppard, S. S. (2014). A Sedna-like body with a perihelion of 80 astronomical units. Nature 507, 471–474.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jeffery, C. S., Tout, C. A., and Lattanzio, J. C. (2006). Astronomy. Nucleosynthesis in binary stars. Science 311, 345–346.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kerstetter, R. A., Bollman, K., Taylor, R. A., Bomblies, K., and Poethig, R. S. (2001). KANADI regulates organ polarity in Arabidopsis. Nature 411, 706–709.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Çayirci, E., and Rong, C. (2009). Security in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Ono, H., Kanazawa, M., and Queiroz, R. de eds. (2009). Logic, Language, Information and Computation: 16th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2009, Tokyo, Japan, June 21-24, 2009. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

van Eemeren, F., Garssen, B., and Meuffels, B. (2009). “The Opening Stage: The Obligation-to-Defend Rule (I),” in Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness: Empirical Research Concerning the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Rules Argumentation Library., eds. B. Garssen and B. Meuffels (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 111–137.

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

Luntz, S. (2017). Boxer Crabs Make Their Anemone “Gloves’” Reproduce Asexually. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/boxer-crabs-make-their-anemone-gloves-reproduce-asexually/ [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 (1980). Update on Federal Matching and Maintenance of Effort Requirements for California. 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

Castro Deller, E. (2013). Recognizing signs of dementia: A curriculum for child welfare workers.

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

Pilon, M. (2012). Armstrong Finds a Mixed Reception in Triathlon. New York Times, B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bruneau, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Bruneau, 2008; Trujillo and Sheppard, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Trujillo and Sheppard, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Kerstetter et al., 2001)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides