How to format your references using the Plants citation style

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

Cardon, L.R. Genetics. Delivering New Disease Genes. Science 2006, 314, 1403–1405.

A journal article with 2 authors

Matzke, M.A.; Matzke, A.J. Cloning Problems Don’t Surprise Plant Biologists. Science 2000, 288, 2318b.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang, G.; Jiang, X.; Wang, E. Tubular Graphite Cones. Science 2003, 300, 472–474.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Boetius, A.; Ravenschlag, K.; Schubert, C.J.; Rickert, D.; Widdel, F.; Gieseke, A.; Amann, R.; Jørgensen, B.B.; Witte, U.; Pfannkuche, O. A Marine Microbial Consortium Apparently Mediating Anaerobic Oxidation of Methane. Nature 2000, 407, 623–626.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reinke, P. Inorganic Nanostructures; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, Germany, 2012; ISBN 9783527645909.

An edited book

Recent Trends in Wireless and Mobile Networks: Third International Conferences, WiMo 2011 and CoNeCo 2011, Ankara, Turkey, June 26-28, 2011. Proceedings; Özcan, A., Zizka, J., Nagamalai, D., Eds.; Communications in Computer and Information Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011; Vol. 162; ISBN 9783642219368.

A chapter in an edited book

Sampaolesi, R.; Sampaolesi, J.R.; Zárate, J. Genetics, Heredity, and Molecular Biology in Glaucoma. In The Glaucomas: Volume II - Open Angle Glaucoma and Angle Closure Glaucoma; Sampaolesi, J.R., Zárate, J., Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014; pp. 71–84 ISBN 9783642354991.

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 Plants.

Blog post

Fang, J. New Stars Born at Milky Way’s Edge Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-stars-born-milky-ways-edge/ (accessed on 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 Summer Youth Jobs Program: Congressional Action Has Increased Emphasis on Remedial Education; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1988;

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Fearrington, N.D. The Relationship between Fathers’ Pre -Natal Involvement with the Mother and Post -Natal Involvement with the Child(Ren). Doctoral dissertation, Capella University: Minneapolis, MN, 2008.

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

Lanchester, J. The Major Blind Spots in Macroeconomics. New York Times 2017, MM14.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Plants
Abbreviation	Plants
ISSN (online)	2223-7747
Scope