Frontiers in Plant Science Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

Frontiers says the abstract should be no longer than a single paragraph and should be structured, for example, according to the IMRAD format. The Frontiers in Plant Science article-types page lists no abstract word limit, and Frontiers' general submission guide says abstracts run 250 to 300 words depending on the journal.

The abstract should cover:

• Background and motivation (1-2 sentences)

• Objective or hypothesis

• Methods overview (briefly)

• Main results with quantitative data

• Conclusions and implications

Frontiers asks for a single paragraph that is structured, for example, according to the IMRAD format, so the content should follow a logical sequence from context through findings to significance.

Frontiers states that authors should minimize the use of abbreviations in the abstract and should not cite references, figures, or tables. Keep it self-contained.

Mini Review and Perspective articles also list an Abstract in their required format on the article-types page, followed by an Introduction, subsections relevant for the subject, and a Discussion.

The Frontiers in Plant Science article-types page lists no fixed limit on the number of figures for Original Research and Review articles. However, every figure should be necessary, and Frontiers asks that each one is mentioned in the text and in numerical order.

Figure requirements:

• Resolution: 300 dpi at final size

• Accepted formats: TIF/TIFF and JPEG in RGB color mode, with EPS accepted upon acceptance

• Submit figures individually, in the same order as they are referred to in the manuscript

• Figure width: 85 mm (1 column) or 180 mm (2 columns)

• Text in figures: the smallest visible text should be no less than eight points in height at actual size

• Panel labels: (A), (B), (C), (D), not embedded over the image, because they are replaced during typesetting

• Graph axes need a self-explanatory label that includes units

• Figures are published under a CC-BY license, and permission must be obtained for copyrighted material from other sources

Table requirements:

• Tables go at the end of the manuscript in an editable format, built in Word or in LaTeX, not as figures

• Table captions go immediately before the table, preceded by the label (for example, Table 1.), in a single paragraph

• Leave an empty line before and after each table

• Each table must be mentioned in the text and in numerical order

• Large tables covering several pages cannot be included in the final PDF and are published as supplementary material

Supplementary Material:

Frontiers calls it "Supplementary Material" (not Supporting Information or Data Supplement). It's uploaded as separate files during submission and displayed along with the published article, and all supplementary files are deposited to figshare for permanent storage and receive a DOI. Supplementary material is not typeset, so present it without tracked changes, highlighted text, or line numbers, and leave the title, author list, and affiliations out of the files. The submission form allows additional files with a maximum size of 30MB.

Frontiers in Plant Science uses an author-year citation format similar to Harvard style but with Frontiers-specific details.

In-text citation rules:

• Single author: (Smith, 2025)

• Two authors: (Smith and Jones, 2025)

• Three or more authors: (Smith et al., 2025)

Reference list formatting:

• Alphabetized by first author's last name

• The names of the first six authors followed by "et al.", with given names abbreviated to initials

• Journal titles shortened, as in "Mol. Cell." in the publisher's own examples

• The DOI provided when available

Worked example (Frontiers author-year style, following the publisher's online-journal example):

Smith, J. A., Jones, B. C., and Williams, D. E. (2026). Root architecture remodeling under phosphate deficiency in Arabidopsis thaliana. Front. Plant Sci. 17:1234567. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2026.1234567

Example book chapter:

Brown, L. M. (2025). "Photosynthetic regulation in C4 crops," in *Advances in Plant Physiology*, eds. R. K. Green and S. T. White (Academic Press), 145-178.

Note a few Frontiers-specific details: journal titles are shortened, the DOI is provided when available, and the format for book chapters puts the chapter title in quotes. Frontiers' author guidelines name RefMe, Zotero, and Mendeley as example referencing tools, so check the output against the publisher's reference examples.

Frontiers' author guidelines say the manuscript should be written using either Word or LaTeX.

Word submissions:

• Use the Frontiers Word template

• Single-spaced, with page and line numbers

• Use section headings appropriate for your field, with up to 5 heading levels

• Upload figures individually, in the order they are referred to in the manuscript, and Frontiers embeds them at the end of the submitted manuscript

• Place tables at the end of the manuscript in editable Word format, not as figures

LaTeX submissions:

• Use the Frontiers LaTeX template, which is linked from the author guidelines and also available as a Frontiers-authored template on Overleaf

• Upload the .tex file, the PDF, and the .bib file if the bibliography is not already included in the .tex file

• Include the figures in the provided PDF; the production office might later ask for high-resolution files in EPS, JPEG, or TIF/TIFF format

• Upload figures individually as TIFF or JPEG at 300 dpi in RGB color mode

If your paper includes complex phylogenetic notation, mathematical models, or extensive equations, LaTeX is the better tool.

1. Collaborative review means reviewers and authors interact directly. Frontiers uses a single anonymized model, so reviewers know who the authors are, their own identities are not shown to authors during review, and the names of the reviewers who endorse a paper appear on the published article. This doesn't change formatting requirements, but it does mean your manuscript needs to be polished at submission because you will be discussing it with reviewers in the review forum.

2. Section-specific requirements vary. Frontiers in Plant Science has 24 specialty sections (Plant Abiotic Stress, Plant Biotechnology, Crop and Product Physiology, etc.). Some article types are section-specific, and only the types in the submission drop-down menu are available for the selected section. Check the section page before submitting.

3. Author contributions are mandatory. During submission, the submitting author specifies each co-author's contributions by choosing from the 14 CRediT roles, and Frontiers generates the authors' contributions statement automatically, for example "JA: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. BK: Data curation, Formal analysis." Each co-author must have participated in writing the original draft and/or critically reviewed and edited the manuscript.

4. Data Availability Statement required. Data availability statements are required for all articles, and Frontiers generates the statement from your answers during submission. Manuscripts with incomplete or incorrect statements are prevented from entering review. Mandatory data types must be deposited in public, community-supported repositories before publication: for sequence data, GenBank, DDBJ, or ENA (with SRA for short-read data and GEO or ArrayExpress for gene expression data), and for proteomics, PRIDE, PeptideAtlas, or ProteomeXchange. "Available on request" is one of the statement types Frontiers lists, but it does not replace deposition of the mandatory data types.

5. Ethics declarations and plant material sourcing. Frontiers' author guidelines require an ethics approval statement for human or animal subject research, and the submission form asks you to declare any involvement of human or animal subjects. For plant material collected in the wild, confirm local collection and permit rules yourself, since the Frontiers policies read here set out permit requirements only for field studies on animals.

6. The 12,000-word limit does not include figure legends. The count covers only the main body of the text, footnotes, and the citations within it, and excludes figure and table captions, the abstract, and the bibliography. Plan accordingly.

Frontiers' author guidelines recommend Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, and Discussion (or their equivalents for your field) for Original Research articles; the order of the other sections below is a common layout, so follow the Frontiers template for the final order:

The Introduction should provide enough context for a broad plant science audience, not just specialists in your subfield. Frontiers is a broad-scope journal, and your paper will be read by researchers outside your immediate area.

Results and Discussion can be combined or kept separate. The author guidelines say section headings should be those appropriate for your field and the research itself. If you combine them, clearly label the section "Results and Discussion."

As a fully open-access journal, Frontiers in Plant Science charges an article processing charge (APC) upon acceptance. The current fee for an Original Research article is CHF 3,150 (an A-type article), and Brief Research Reports are B-type articles at CHF 2,500. Frontiers charges in Swiss Francs and offers fee support as discounts, which are not automatic waivers, along with institutional partnerships.

The APC is charged after peer review and acceptance, not at submission. You won't need to pay anything to submit your manuscript for review.

For manuscripts targeting Frontiers in Plant Science, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

Specialty section mismatch causing editorial routing failure. Frontiers in Plant Science is divided into 24 specialty sections covering plant physiology, genetics, molecular mechanisms, ecology, and applied plant science. Papers submitted to the wrong section are rejected for scope or transferred, causing significant delays. A study on drought stress gene expression must go to the plant abiotic stress section; submitting it to plant cell biology causes routing failure even if the science is strong.

Ethics statement absent for studies involving human-edible plant material or protected species. Frontiers' author guidelines require an ethics approval statement for human or animal subject research, and the submission form asks you to declare any involvement of human or animal subjects. Authors collecting plant material from protected habitats should also confirm local collection-permit rules.

Article type scope insufficient for Original Research designation. Frontiers asks authors to choose the article type that matches the manuscript and to comply with that type's description. Brief Research Reports present original research and/or preliminary findings more succinctly and with fewer details than Original Research, so single-experiment studies or highly descriptive reports may fit that type better. The journal also states that quantitative analysis, including phenotypic measurements and qPCR expression analysis, needs a minimum of three biological replicates.

Data availability statement missing. Frontiers requires mandatory data types, such as genetic sequence, gene expression, and proteomics data, to be deposited in public, community-supported repositories before publication, and a manuscript with an incomplete or incorrect Data Availability Statement is prevented from entering review. A statement that data are available on request does not replace deposition of the mandatory data types. In our review work we check the data-availability statement, the methods, and the figure legends together.

A Frontiers in Plant Science submission readiness check evaluates specialty section fit, data availability compliance, and article type match against these desk-rejection patterns.