How to format your references using the American Journal of Plant Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Plant Sciences. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Herrling, P. (2007) Patent Sense. Nature, 449, 174–175.

A journal article with 2 authors

Channell, R. and Lomolino, M.V. (2000) Dynamic Biogeography and Conservation of Endangered Species. Nature, 403, 84–86.

A journal article with 3 authors

Griffin, D.M., Hoffman, D.S. and Strick, P.L. (2015) Corticomotoneuronal Cells Are “Functionally Tuned.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 350, 667–670.

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Barnosky, A.D., Matzke, N., Tomiya, S., Wogan, G.O.U., Swartz, B., Quental, T.B., Marshall, C., McGuire, J.L., Lindsey, E.L., Maguire, K.C., Mersey, B. and Ferrer, E.A. (2011) Has the Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived? Nature, 471, 51–57.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wong, B.P., Mittal, A., Cao, Y. and Starr, G. (2005) Nano-CMOS Circuit and Physical Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Marron, P.J., Voigt, T., Corke, P. and Mottola, L., Eds. (2010) Real-World Wireless Sensor Networks: 4th International Workshop, REALWSN 2010, Colombo, Sri Lanka, December 16-17, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Hyslop-Margison, E. and Savarese, J. l. (2012) The Corporatization of the University. In: Mitchell, R.C. and Moore, S.A., Eds., Politics, Participation & Power Relations: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Critical Citizenship in the Classroom and Community, SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 51–62.

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 American Journal of Plant Sciences.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2016, October 12) Remains Of Ancient Star Cluster Found In Milky Way’s Heart. IFLScience, IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/remains-of-ancient-star-cluster-found-in-milky-ways-heart/.

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. (1994) NASA Contract Management: Improving the Use of DCAA’s Auditing Services. 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

Ehsani, S. (2014) Design of a Teleoperation – Based Robotic Surgical System. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Grynbaum, M.M. (2017, June 10) Testimony By Comey Turns Into Ratings Gold. New York Times, A17.

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	American Journal of Plant Sciences
Abbreviation	Am. J. Plant Sci.
ISSN (print)	2158-2742
ISSN (online)	2158-2750
Scope