How to format your references using the International Journal of Plant Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Plant Sciences (IJPS). 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

Choi JR 2014 The effects of nonextensivity on quantum dissipation. Sci Rep 4:3911.

A journal article with 2 authors

Koren I, A Kimchi 2012 Cell biology. Promoting tumorigenesis by suppressing autophagy. Science 338:889–890.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pasham DR, TE Strohmayer, RF Mushotzky 2014 A 400-solar-mass black hole in the galaxy M82. Nature 513:74–76.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Gunawardane LS, K Saito, KM Nishida, K Miyoshi, Y Kawamura, T Nagami, H Siomi, MC Siomi 2007 A slicer-mediated mechanism for repeat-associated siRNA 5’ end formation in Drosophila. Science 315:1587–1590.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cantrell RS, C Cosner 2004 Spatial Ecology via Reaction-Diffusion Equations. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Hommel G, S Huanye eds. 2006 Human Interaction with Machines: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop held at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, March 15–16, 2005. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Ivanov P, K Voigt 2011 Schema, Ontology and Metamodel Matching - Different, But Indeed the Same? In: Bellatreche L, Mota Pinto F, editors. Model and Data Engineering: First International Conference, MEDI 2011, Óbidos, Portugal, September 28-30, 2011. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. p. 18–30.

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 International Journal of Plant Sciences.

Blog post

Evans K 2016 Jul 21 Here’s What A Serving Size Of Each Of Your Favorite Foods Looks Like. IFLScience. [accessed 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/heres-what-a-serving-size-of-each-of-your-favorite-foods-looks-like/

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 1997 DFAS Telecommunications: DFAS Has the Opportunity To Reduce Its Telecommunication Line Capacity. 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

Finley S 2014 How online communication and social media networking are used in alcohol use treatment [Doctoral dissertation]. Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University.

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

Schwartz J 2016 Dec 29 At Exxon, Nominee Steered Company’s ‘Evolution’ on Climate. New York Times:A16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Choi 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Koren and Kimchi 2012; Choi 2014).

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

Two authors: (Koren and Kimchi 2012)
Three or more authors: (Gunawardane et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Plant Sciences
Abbreviation	Int. J. Plant Sci.
ISSN (print)	1058-5893
ISSN (online)	1537-5315
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science