How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Plant Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Plant 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	Download the output style file
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

Flicek P: Journal club. A computational geneticist looks at mechanisms of chromosomal evolution. Nature 2010, 463:713.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nicolet A, Zolla F: Physics. Cloaking with curved spaces. Science 2009, 323:46–47.

A journal article with 3 authors

Karlson RH, Cornell HV, Hughes TP: Coral communities are regionally enriched along an oceanic biodiversity gradient. Nature 2004, 429:867–870.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Ma J-B, Yuan Y-R, Meister G, Pei Y, Tuschl T, Patel DJ: Structural basis for 5’-end-specific recognition of guide RNA by the A. fulgidus Piwi protein. Nature 2005, 434:666–670.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Panek W, Wentworth T: Mastering Microsoft® Windows® 7 Administration. Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

Dolman AJ, Valentini R, Freibauer A (Eds): The Continental-Scale Greenhouse Gas Balance of Europe. Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Armaselu B, Daescu O: Algorithms for Fair Partitioning of Convex Polygons. In Combinatorial Optimization and Applications: 8th International Conference, COCOA 2014, Wailea, Maui, HI, USA, December 19-21, 2014, Proceedings. Edited by Zhang Z, Wu L, Xu W, Du D-Z. Springer International Publishing; 2014:53–65.

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 Current Opinion in Plant Biology.

Blog post

Luntz S: Seriously Creepy Parasite Escapes from Praying Mantis. IFLScience 2014,

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: Highway Safety: Monitoring Practices To Show Compliance With Speed Limits Should Be Reexamined. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Howard JT: Transracial adoption psychoeducational services for potential adoptive parents: A grant proposal. 2010,

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

Kenigsberg B: Gertrude of Arabia. New York Times 2017,

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Current Opinion in Plant Biology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Plant Biol.
ISSN (print)	1369-5266
ISSN (online)	1879-0356
Scope	Plant Science