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

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

Huisman, J. (2010). Comment on “Patterns of diversity in marine phytoplankton.” Science 329, 512; author reply 512.

A journal article with 2 authors

Simpson, S. J., and Raubenheimer, D. (2014). Perspective: Tricks of the trade. Nature 508, S66.

A journal article with 3 authors

Plotkin, J. B., Dushoff, J., and Fraser, H. B. (2004). Detecting selection using a single genome sequence of M. tuberculosis and P. falciparum. Nature 428, 942–945.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lahdenperä, M., Lummaa, V., Helle, S., Tremblay, M., and Russell, A. F. (2004). Fitness benefits of prolonged post-reproductive lifespan in women. Nature 428, 178–181.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jackson, J. (2012). Political Oratory and Cartooning. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Malyshkin, V. ed. (2011). Parallel Computing Technologies: 11th International Conference, PaCT 2011, Kazan, Russia, September 19-23, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Kobayashi, T., Okada, H., Makimoto, N., Oyama, S., Funakubo, H., Itoh, T., et al. (2014). “MEMS-based microsensors using piezoelectric thin films as sensors and actuators,” in Materials Challenges and Testing for Manufacturing, Mobility, Biomedical Applications and Climate, eds. W. Udomkichdecha, T. Böllinghaus, A. Manonukul, and J. Lexow (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 37–47.

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 Science.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Celebrate 50 Years Of Humans Walking In Space With NASA. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/celebrate-50-years-humans-walking-space-nasa/ (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 (1999). Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Concerns About Compliance Information on Biomedical Equipment. 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

Shakya, R. M. (2014). Watershed-Scale Evaluation of Flood Reduction Effect of Low Impact Development Designs. Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University.

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

Branch, J. (2017). The Science Behind the Squeak. New York Times, D1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Huisman, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Huisman, 2010; Simpson and Raubenheimer, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Simpson and Raubenheimer, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Lahdenperä et al., 2004)

About the journal

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