How to format your references using the Acta Botanica Gallica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Botanica Gallica. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles 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
Linden, Joel. 2006. “Cell Biology. Purinergic Chemotaxis.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 314 (5806): 1689–1690.
A journal article with 2 authors
Verchère, Alice, and Anant K. Menon. 2015. “Structural Biology: Lipid Gymnastics.” Nature 524 (7566): 420–422.
A journal article with 3 authors
Junker, Jan Philipp, Fabian Ziegler, and Matthias Rief. 2009. “Ligand-Dependent Equilibrium Fluctuations of Single Calmodulin Molecules.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 323 (5914): 633–637.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Zhang, Hailong, Zhiru Yang, Yang Shen, and Liang Tong. 2003. “Crystal Structure of the Carboxyltransferase Domain of Acetyl-Coenzyme A Carboxylase.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 299 (5615): 2064–2067.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ji, Zhen-Gang. 2017. Hydrodynamics and Water Quality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Kovacevic, Raimund M., Georg Ch Pflug, and Maria Teresa Vespucci, eds. 2013. Handbook of Risk Management in Energy Production and Trading. Vol. 199. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science. Boston, MA: Springer US.
A chapter in an edited book
Abdinia, Sahel, Arthur H. M. van Roermund, and Eugenio Cantatore. 2015. “Digital Circuit Design.” In Design of Organic Complementary Circuits and Systems on Foil, edited by Arthur van Roermund and Eugenio Cantatore, 47–67. Analog Circuits and Signal Processing. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Acta Botanica Gallica.

Blog post
Andrew, Elise. 2015. “World’s First Malaria Vaccine Gets Green Light.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/worlds-first-malaria-vaccine-gets-green-light/.

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. 2013. Federal-Aid Highways: Improved Guidance Could Enhance States’ Use of Life-Cycle Cost Analysis in Pavement Selection. GAO-13-544. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Breckenridge, Courtney. 2017. “Measuring Object and Attribute Salience in 2014 Illinois Gubernatorial Endorsements.” Doctoral dissertation, Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University.

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
Walsh, Mary Williams. 2011. “William Schreyer, 83, Merrill Chief, Dies.” New York Times, January 25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Linden 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Linden 2006; Verchère and Menon 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Verchère and Menon 2015)
  • Three authors: (Junker, Ziegler, and Rief 2009)
  • 4 or more authors: (Zhang et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleActa Botanica Gallica
AbbreviationActa Bot. Gallica
ISSN (print)1253-8078
ISSN (online)2166-3408
ScopePlant Science

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