How to format your references using the The Plant Cell citation style

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

Wickware P. Fields of dreams. Nature. 2002:415(6870):4–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lovett BW and Benjamin SC. Comment on “Multipartite entanglement among single spins in diamond.” Science. 2009:323(5918):1169; author reply 1169.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chester JS, Chester FM, and Kronenberg AK. Fracture surface energy of the Punchbowl fault, San Andreas system. Nature. 2005:437(7055):133–136.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Lum L, Yao S, Mozer B, Rovescalli A, Von Kessler D, Nirenberg M, and Beachy PA. Identification of Hedgehog pathway components by RNAi in Drosophila cultured cells. Science. 2003:299(5615):2039–2045.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Taha A-EM, Hassanein HS, and Ali NA. LTE, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK).

An edited book

Mathew SJ and Zarate CA Jr eds. Ketamine for Treatment-Resistant Depression: The First Decade of Progress (Springer International Publishing: Cham).

A chapter in an edited book

Noran O. An Enterprise Architecture Approach towards Environmental Management. . In. Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability: IFIP TC 5 International Conference, EAI2N 2010, Held as Part of WCC 2010, Brisbane, Australia, September 20-23, 2010. Proceedings, P Bernus, G Doumeingts, and M Fox, eds, IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. (Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg), pp. 44–55.

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 The Plant Cell.

Blog post

Davis J. SpaceX To Deliver Radiation-Eating Fungi From Chernobyl To The ISS. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/space/spacex-to-deliver-radiationeating-fungi-from-chernobyl-to-the-iss/. Retrieved October 30, 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. Mission Budgeting: Discussion and Illustration of the Concept in Research and Development Programs (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

Lee Y. Lexical Stress Features Affecting the Recognition of English Loanwords in Korean by Native English Hearers. 2017.

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

Greenhouse L. Justices Reaffirm Abortion Access For Emergencies. New York Times. 2006:A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wickware 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Wickware 2002; Lovett and Benjamin 2009).

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

Two authors: (Lovett and Benjamin 2009)
Three or more authors: (Lum et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Plant Cell
Abbreviation	Plant Cell
ISSN (print)	1040-4651
ISSN (online)	1531-298X
Scope	Plant Science Cell Biology