How to format your references using the Plant Biology citation style

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

McCabe H. (2000) Post-cold war needs “new forms of scientific linkage.” Nature 404:8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Roeb M., Müller-Steinhagen H. (2010) Engineering. Concentrating on solar electricity and fuels. Science (New York, NY) 329:773–774.

A journal article with 3 authors

Thisse B., Wright C.V., Thisse C. (2000) Activin- and Nodal-related factors control antero-posterior patterning of the zebrafish embryo. Nature 403:425–428.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Cai W.-J., Chen L., Chen B., Gao Z., Lee S.H., Chen J., Pierrot D., Sullivan K., Wang Y., Hu X., Huang W.-J., Zhang Y., Xu S., Murata A., Grebmeier J.M., Jones E.P., Zhang H. (2010) Decrease in the CO2 uptake capacity in an ice-free Arctic Ocean basin. Science (New York, NY) 329:556–559.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Radzevich S.P. (2013) Geometry of Surfaces. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Lowenthal F., Lefebvre L. (Eds) (2014) Language and Recursion. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Snickars F., Blaus J., Eriksson T., Reitberger G. (2015) On the Economic and Social Impacts of University Research. In: Ullberg E (ed) New Perspectives on Internationalization and Competitiveness: Integrating Economics, Innovation and Higher Education. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 47–71.

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 Plant Biology.

Blog post

Davis J. (2017) Ebola Outbreak Has Been Confirmed In The Democratic Republic Of Congo. IFLScience [online] URL: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/ebola-outbreak-has-been-confirmed-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo/ (accessed 30 October 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 (1997) Aviation Safety and Security: Challenges to Implementing the Recommendations of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. 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

Hartl S.D. (2012) The role of culture in managing diversity: How culturally based heuristics differ in minority and non-minority managerial decision making. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN

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

Kelly M. (1993) THE INAUGURATION: Seizing the Day; New President Brings Opportunity to Cash In. New York Times:A12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McCabe 2000).
This sentence cites two references (McCabe 2000; Roeb & Müller-Steinhagen 2010).

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

Two authors: (Roeb & Müller-Steinhagen 2010)
Three or more authors: (Cai et al. 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Biology
Abbreviation	Plant Biol. (Stuttg.)
ISSN (print)	1435-8603
ISSN (online)	1438-8677
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science General Medicine