How to format your references using the Plant Disease citation style

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

Bollinger, J. M., Jr. 2008. Biochemistry. Electron relay in proteins. Science 320:1730–1731.

A journal article with 2 authors

Palumbi, S. R., and Warner, R. R. 2003. Ecology. Why gobies are like Hobbits. Science 299:51–52.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sun, L., Wang, J., and Bonaccurso, E. 2013. Conductivity of individual particles measured by a microscopic four-point-probe method. Sci. Rep. 3:1991.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Behrenfeld, M. J., Worthington, K., Sherrell, R. M., Chavez, F. P., Strutton, P., McPhaden, M., and Shea, D. M. 2006. Controls on tropical Pacific Ocean productivity revealed through nutrient stress diagnostics. Nature 442:1025–1028.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hopp, V. 2000. Grundlagen der Life Sciences. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Pfenning, F., ed. 2007. Automated Deduction – CADE-21: 21st International Conference on Automated Deduction Bremen, Germany, July 17-20, 2007 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Deutscher, G. 2015. Point Contact Spectroscopy in Strongly Correlated Systems. In Strongly Correlated Systems: Experimental Techniques, Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences, eds. Adolfo Avella and Ferdinando Mancini. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 111–135.

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 Disease.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2016. Newton’s Apple Tree Genome Sequenced For Comparison With Modern Trees. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/newtons-apple-tree-genome-sequenced-for-comparison-with-modern-trees/ (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. 1976. National Assessment of Educational Progress: Its Results Need To Be Made More Useful. 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

Morton, W. G. 2015. Isolating mycorrhizal fungi from Spiranthes vernalis for subsequent in vitro seed germination. .

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

Kishkovsky, S. 2015. Filmmaker From Ukraine Sent to Prison by Russians. New York Times A6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bollinger 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Bollinger 2008; Palumbi and Warner 2003).

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

Two authors: (Palumbi and Warner 2003)
Three or more authors: (Behrenfeld et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Disease
Abbreviation	Plant Dis.
ISSN (print)	0191-2917
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science