How to format your references using the Molecular Breeding citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular Breeding. 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

Mukhopadhyay S (2012) Early differentiation and volatile accretion recorded in deep-mantle neon and xenon. Nature 486:101–104

A journal article with 2 authors

Kutateladze T, Overduin M (2001) Structural mechanism of endosome docking by the FYVE domain. Science 291:1793–1796

A journal article with 3 authors

Alimardani M, Nishio S, Ishiguro H (2013) Humanlike robot hands controlled by brain activity arouse illusion of ownership in operators. Sci Rep 3:2396

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Otsu T, Ando T, Takiguchi Y, et al (2014) Direct evidence for three-dimensional off-axis trapping with single Laguerre-Gaussian beam. Sci Rep 4:4579

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zlokarnik M (2006) Scale-Up in Chemical Engineering. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG

An edited book

Vastola A (ed) (2015) The Sustainability of Agro-Food and Natural Resource Systems in the Mediterranean Basin. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Hilhorst HWM, Finch-Savage WE, Buitink J, et al (2010) Dormancy in Plant Seeds. In: Lubzens E, Cerda J, Clark M (eds) Dormancy and Resistance in Harsh Environments. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 43–67

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 Molecular Breeding.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) Lost In Translation: Five Common English Phrases You May Be Using Incorrectly. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1990) Highway Safety: Fatalities in Light Trucks and Vans. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Coleman KM (2015) Parent involvement in the promotion of healthy outcomes for young girls: A grant writing project. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Sisario B (2016) YouTube Settles a Skirmish Over Songwriting Royalties. New York Times B3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mukhopadhyay 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Kutateladze and Overduin 2001; Mukhopadhyay 2012).

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

Two authors: (Kutateladze and Overduin 2001)
Three or more authors: (Otsu et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Breeding
Abbreviation	Mol. Breed.
ISSN (print)	1380-3743
ISSN (online)	1572-9788
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Biotechnology Genetics Molecular Biology