How to format your references using the South African Journal of Botany citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Journal of Botany. 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

Bollen, M., 2015. Cell cycle: It takes three to find the exit. Nature 517, 29–30.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cox, C.M., Chao, B.F., 2002. Detection of a large-scale mass redistribution in the terrestrial system since 1998. Science 297, 831–833.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hautier, Y., Niklaus, P.A., Hector, A., 2009. Competition for light causes plant biodiversity loss after eutrophication. Science 324, 636–638.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Koelle, K., Rodó, X., Pascual, M., Yunus, M., Mostafa, G., 2005. Refractory periods and climate forcing in cholera dynamics. Nature 436, 696–700.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Franssen, J.-M., Real, P.V., 2010. Fire Design of Steel Structures. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Williams, C. (Ed.), 2016. Social Work and the City: Urban Themes in 21st-Century Social Work. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London.

A chapter in an edited book

Wester, R., 2011. Thermomechanics, in: Poprawe, R. (Ed.), Tailored Light 2: Laser Application Technology, RWTHedition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 63–67.

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 South African Journal of Botany.

Blog post

Andrew, D., 2015. Science-Backed Ways To Improve Your Wi-Fi Signal At Home [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1972. Reply to the Health, Education, and Welfare on Recommendations Made in the GAO Report to the Congress (No. B-117604(7)). 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

Pigott, C., 2016. School Resource Officers and the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Discovering Trends of Expulsions in Public Schools (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Marx, L., 2015. A Modern Marriage With Multiple Parts. New York Times ST17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bollen, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Bollen, 2015; Cox and Chao, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Cox and Chao, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Koelle et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	South African Journal of Botany
Abbreviation	S. Afr. J. Bot.
ISSN (print)	0254-6299
Scope	Plant Science