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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Technical Advances 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

Fields, R. D. (2010). Neuroscience. Change in the brain’s white matter. Science 330, 768–769.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kovach, J. D., and Lamb, R. S. (2014). Evolution. There can be only one. Science 343, 623–624.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hochberg, Y. V., Serrano, C., and Ziedonis, R. (2015). ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Intangible but bankable. Science 348, 1202.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Leroy, B. J., Lemay, S. G., Kong, J., and Dekker, C. (2004). Electrical generation and absorption of phonons in carbon nanotubes. Nature 432, 371–374.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vicat-Blanc, P., Soudan, S., Guillier, R., and Goglin, B. (2013). Computing Networks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Takeda, H. ed. (2016). Micro-Performance During Postwar Japan’s High-Growth Era. Singapore: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

MacLean, D., and Komatineni, S. (2014). “Working with Preferences and Saving State,” in Android Fragments, ed. S. Komatineni (Berkeley, CA: Apress), 61–81.

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 Technical Advances in Plant Science.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014). Parasite Turns Plant Into Flowerless Zombies. IFLScience.

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 (2015). Women in STEM Research: Federal Agencies Differ in the Data They Collect on Grant Applicants. 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

Lee, J. Y. (2008). Socio-Spatial Exclusion Based on Human Activities and Social Networks in Space-Time: A Case Study of Koreans in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, OH: Ohio 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

Wagner, J. (2017). Brought Together by a Fight With Cancer and a Love of Baseball. New York Times, D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fields, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Fields, 2010; Kovach and Lamb, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Kovach and Lamb, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Leroy et al., 2004)

About the journal

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