How to format your references using the Plant Ecology citation style

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

Trewavas A (2002) Mindless mastery. Nature 415:841

A journal article with 2 authors

Schulz HN, Schulz HD (2005) Large sulfur bacteria and the formation of phosphorite. Science 307:416–418

A journal article with 3 authors

Douglas SM, Bachelet I, Church GM (2012) A logic-gated nanorobot for targeted transport of molecular payloads. Science 335:831–834

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Sun L, Zhou X, Huang W, Liu X, Yan H, Xie Z, Wu Z, Zhao S, Da Shao, Yang W (2013) Preliminary evidence for a 1000-year-old tsunami in the South China Sea. Sci Rep 3:1655

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tang C (2016) The Data Industry: The Business and Economics of Information and Big Data. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Naboni R (2015) Advanced Customization in Architectural Design and Construction. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Sebbah S, Boukhtouta A, Berger J, Ghanmi A (2013) Military Logistics Planning in Humanitarian Relief Operations. In: Zeimpekis V, Ichoua S, Minis I (eds) Humanitarian and Relief Logistics: Research Issues, Case Studies and Future Trends. Springer, New York, NY, pp 77–110

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 Ecology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J (2017) Scientists Thought The Moon Had Volcanic Activity Recently. They Were Probably Wrong. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-moon-was-not-as-volcanically-active-recently-as-we-thought/. 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 (1997) FCC: Unlicensed NII Devices in the 5 GHz Frequency Range. 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

Vu MK (2015) Reducing mental health provider burnout through wellness: A grant proposal. 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

Isaac M (2017) Uber Board, Deeply Split, Can’t Agree On a C.E.O. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Trewavas 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Trewavas 2002; Schulz and Schulz 2005).

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

Two authors: (Schulz and Schulz 2005)
Three or more authors: (Sun et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Ecology
Abbreviation	Plant Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1385-0237
ISSN (online)	1573-5052
Scope	Plant Science Ecology