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 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

Estrada-Oyuela, R. (2009). Copenhagen needs a strong lead negotiator. Nature 461, 1056–1057.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhou, Z., and Zheng, S. (2003). The missing link in Ginkgo evolution. Nature 423, 821–822.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schröder, G. F., Levitt, M., and Brunger, A. T. (2010). Super-resolution biomolecular crystallography with low-resolution data. Nature 464, 1218–1222.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Lim, K., Durand, M., Baudelet, M., and Richardson, M. (2014). Transition from linear- to nonlinear-focusing regime in filamentation. Sci. Rep. 4, 7217.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rees, H. (2011). Supply Chain Management in the Drug Industry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Russo, J. (2013). Role of the Transcriptome in Breast Cancer Prevention., ed. I. H. Russo. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Ahrend, R. (2006). “Russia’s Economic Expansion 1999–2005,” in Return to Growth in CIS Countries: Monetary Policy and Macroeconomic Framework, eds. L. Vinhas de Souza and O. Havrylyshyn (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 90–121.

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

Andrews, R. (2015). Biodiversity Protects Ecosystems Against Climate Change. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/biodiversity-protects-ecosystems-against-climate-change/ (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 (1982). Industrial Policy: Japan’s Flexible Approach. 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

Lovejoy, L. P. (2010). On the control of selective attention in the primate superior colliculus. La Jolla, CA: University of California San Diego.

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

Lasdun, J. (2017). Odd Coupling. New York Times, BR11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Estrada-Oyuela, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Zhou and Zheng, 2003; Estrada-Oyuela, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Zhou and Zheng, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Lim et al., 2014)

About the journal

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