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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Plant Molecular Biology Reporter. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Bucksbaum PH (2006) Chemistry. The first femtosecond in the life of a chemical reaction. Science 312:373–374

A journal article with 2 authors

Alexander M, Christia F (2011) Context modularity of human altruism. Science 334:1392–1394

A journal article with 3 authors

Guiteras R, Levinsohn J, Mobarak AM (2015) Sanitation subsidies. Encouraging sanitation investment in the developing world: a cluster-randomized trial. Science 348:903–906

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Sanderson SL, Cheer AY, Goodrich JS, et al (2001) Crossflow filtration in suspension-feeding fishes. Nature 412:439–441

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson RK (2012) Visual Data Mining. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Steenbeek O, Lecq F van der (eds) (2007) Costs and Benefits of Collective Pension Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Mehta CR (2012) Sample Size Reestimation for Confirmatory Clinical Trials. In: Harrington D (ed) Designs for Clinical Trials: Perspectives on Current Issues. Springer, New York, NY, pp 81–108

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 Reporter.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Identical genetics doesn’t mean identical behavior for bacteria. 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 (2002) Highway Infrastructure: Physical Conditions of the Interstate Highway System Have Improved, but Congestion and Other Pressure Continue. 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

Guillory MK (2017) An Analysis of Corporal Punishment Practices in the State of Tennessee. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana

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

Malkin E, Minder R (2016) A Former Mexican Governor Is Arrested, but Not by His Own Country. New York Times A4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bucksbaum 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bucksbaum 2006; Alexander and Christia 2011).

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

Two authors: (Alexander and Christia 2011)
Three or more authors: (Sanderson et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Molecular Biology Reporter
Abbreviation	Plant Mol. Biol. Rep.
ISSN (print)	0735-9640
ISSN (online)	1572-9818
Scope	Plant Science Molecular Biology