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

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

Perrin, M. D. (2015). Astrophysics: Surprisingly fast motions in a dust disk. Nature 526, 204–205.

A journal article with 2 authors

Abbott, A., and Gitschel, U. (2000). German scientists left in the cold as Berlin rejects rescue plan. Nature 406, 663–664.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cwiok, S., Heenen, P.-H., and Nazarewicz, W. (2005). Shape coexistence and triaxiality in the superheavy nuclei. Nature 433, 705–709.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Eremets, M. I., Trojan, I. A., Medvedev, S. A., Tse, J. S., and Yao, Y. (2008). Superconductivity in hydrogen dominant materials: silane. Science 319, 1506–1509.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Promislow, S. D. (2010). Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Shen, B. (2013). Nonlinear Stochastic Systems with Incomplete Information: Filtering and Control., eds. Z. Wang and H. Shu. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhong, N. (2007). “Ways to Develop Human-Level Web Intelligence: A Brain Informatics Perspective,” in The Semantic Web: Research and Applications: 4th European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2007, Innsbruck, Austria, June 3-7, 2007. Proceedings, eds. E. Franconi, M. Kifer, and W. May (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 27–36.

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 Systems Biology.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016). There’s A Cheaper Alternative To The EpiPen - But Your Pharmacist Can Only Give It To You If You Do This. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/theres-a-cheaper-alternative-to-the-epipen-but-your-pharmacist-can-only-give-it-to-you-if-you-do-this/ (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). Hazardous Materials Rail Shipments: A Review of Emergency Response Information in Selected Train Documents. 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

Peterson, N. R. (2015). Subspecies composition, genetic variation and structure of Largemouth Bass in Puerto Rico reservoirs. Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State 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

Greenhouse, L. (2008). Justices Say Law Bars Retaliation Over Bias Claims. 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 (Perrin, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Abbott and Gitschel, 2000; Perrin, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Abbott and Gitschel, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Eremets et al., 2008)

About the journal

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