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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Plant Nutrition. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Asplund, M. (2008). Astronomy. The shining make-up of our star. Science 322, 51–52.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brockes, J. P., and Kumar, A. (2005). Appendage regeneration in adult vertebrates and implications for regenerative medicine. Science 310, 1919–1923.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen, J., Weidner, D. J., and Vaughan, M. T. (2002). The strength of Mg(0.9)Fe(0.1)SiO3 perovskite at high pressure and temperature. Nature 419, 824–826.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Treydte, K. S., Schleser, G. H., Helle, G., Frank, D. C., Winiger, M., Haug, G. H., et al. (2006). The twentieth century was the wettest period in northern Pakistan over the past millennium. Nature 440, 1179–1182.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Voit, B., Haag, R., Appelhans, D., and Welzel, P. B. (2016). Bio- and Multifunctional Polymer Architectures. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cantoni, V., Dimov, D., and Tistarelli, M. eds. (2014). Biometric Authentication: First International Workshop, BIOMET 2014, Sofia, Bulgaria, June 23-24, 2014. Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Abel, A. (2006). “Semi-continuous Sized Types and Termination,” in Computer Science Logic: 20th International Workshop, CSL 2006, 15th Annual Conference of the EACSL, Szeged, Hungary, September 25-29, 2006. Proceedings, ed. Z. Ésik (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 72–88.

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 Nutrition.

Blog post

Andrews, R. (2016). Mysterious Martian Plumes May Have Been Caused By Powerful Solar Ejections. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/mysterious-martian-plumes-may-have-been-caused-powerful-solar-ejections/ (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 (2013). Video Marketplace: Competition Is Evolving, and Government Reporting Should Be Reevaluated. 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

Strong, M. (2013). Investigation and Characterization of Features on a Cretaceous-Paleogene Seismic Horizon in Northern Louisiana. Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana.

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

Barboza, D. (2017). Chinese Giant Rose on a Web Of Family Ties. 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 (Asplund, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Brockes and Kumar, 2005; Asplund, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Brockes and Kumar, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Treydte et al., 2006)

About the journal

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