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 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

Lazar, M. A. (2008). Developmental biology. How now, brown fat? Science 321, 1048–1049.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hilf, R. J. C., and Dutzler, R. (2008). X-ray structure of a prokaryotic pentameric ligand-gated ion channel. Nature 452, 375–379.

A journal article with 3 authors

Thisse, B., Wright, C. V., and Thisse, C. (2000). Activin- and Nodal-related factors control antero-posterior patterning of the zebrafish embryo. Nature 403, 425–428.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Huang, L. R., Cox, E. C., Austin, R. H., and Sturm, J. C. (2004). Continuous particle separation through deterministic lateral displacement. Science 304, 987–990.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tardu, S. (2011). Statistical Approach to Wall Turbulence. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cruciani, R. A., and Knotkova, H. eds. (2013). Handbook of Methadone Prescribing and Buprenorphine Therapy. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Pagneux, V. (2013). “Trapped Modes and Edge Resonances in Acoustics and Elasticity,” in Dynamic Localization Phenomena in Elasticity, Acoustics and Electromagnetism, eds. R. V. Craster and J. Kaplunov (Vienna: Springer), 181–223.

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

Davis, J. (2015). Chimps Walk Bipedally In A Similar Way To Humans. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/chimps-walk-bipedally-similar-way-humans/ (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 (1986). Educating Deaf Students at Federally Assisted Postsecondary Schools. 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

Gonzalez, R. (2010). A mentoring program for Latino foster youth: A grant proposal. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Vecsey, G. (2009). 32 Voices Louder Than Limbaugh’s. New York Times, B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lazar, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Hilf and Dutzler, 2008; Lazar, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Hilf and Dutzler, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Huang et al., 2004)

About the journal

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