How to format your references using the Plant Molecular Biology citation style

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

Chazelle B (2007) Computer science. Coding and computing join forces. Science 317:1691–1692

A journal article with 2 authors

Hilfinger A, Paulsson J (2015) Systems biology: Defiant daughters and coordinated cousins. Nature 519:422–423

A journal article with 3 authors

Russell DG, Barry CE 3rd, Flynn JL (2010) Tuberculosis: what we don’t know can, and does, hurt us. Science 328:852–856

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Sakamoto Y, Kaneda M, Terasaki O, Zhao DY, Kim JM, Stucky G, Shin HJ, Ryoo R (2000) Direct imaging of the pores and cages of three-dimensional mesoporous materials. Nature 408:449–453

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Yener M, Dundar O (2016) Expert Android ® Studio. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

An edited book

Ruiz-Lopez MF, Olivares del Valle FJ (eds) (2016) 9th Congress on Electronic Structure: Principles and Applications (ESPA 2014): A Conference Selection from Theoretical Chemistry Accounts, 1st ed. 2016. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Abidi N, Klawonn F, Thumfart JO (2013) Time Point Estimation of a Single Sample from High Throughput Experiments Based on Time-Resolved Data and Robust Correlation Measures. In: Tucker A, Höppner F, Siebes A, Swift S (eds) Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis XII: 12th International Symposium, IDA 2013, London, UK, October 17-19, 2013. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 32–43

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 Molecular Biology.

Blog post

Evans K (2016) 7 Things In Your Daily Life That You Didn’t Know Were Based On NASA Innovations. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/7-things-in-your-daily-life-that-you-didn-t-know-were-based-on-nasa-innovations/. 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 (1979) Review of the Administration of Research and Demonstration Grants by the Rehabilitation Services Administration. 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

Kolb JN (2015) What’s professional development got to do with it? The value of lesson study in implementing the common core standards for mathematical practices. 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

Brantley B (2016) A Playwright Intent on Naming, and Goading, the Beast Within. New York Times C2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chazelle 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Chazelle 2007; Hilfinger and Paulsson 2015).

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

Two authors: (Hilfinger and Paulsson 2015)
Three or more authors: (Sakamoto et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Molecular Biology
Abbreviation	Plant Mol. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0167-4412
ISSN (online)	1573-5028
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Genetics General Medicine