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

Nath, I. (2008) Obituary: Christopher Curtis (1939-2008). Nature, 453, 1002.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hazen, R.M. and Roedder, E. (2001) Biogeology. How Old Are Bacteria from the Permian Age? Nature, 411, 155–156.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pál, C., Papp, B. and Hurst, L.D. (2003) Genomic Function: Rate of Evolution and Gene Dispensability. Nature, 421, 496–7; discussion 497-8.

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Huh, J.R., Leung, M.W.L., Huang, P., Ryan, D.A., Krout, M.R., Malapaka, R.R.V., Chow, J., Manel, N., Ciofani, M., Kim, S.V., Cuesta, A., Santori, F.R., Lafaille, J.J., Xu, H.E., Gin, D.Y., Rastinejad, F. and Littman, D.R. (2011) Digoxin and Its Derivatives Suppress TH17 Cell Differentiation by Antagonizing RORγt Activity. Nature, 472, 486–490.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Çayirci, E. and Rong, C. (2009) Security in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Daithankar, J. (2014) Transportation Management with SAP TM 9.0: A Hands-On Guide to Configuring, Implementing, and Optimizing SAP TM. Pandit, T., Ed., Apress, Berkeley, CA.

A chapter in an edited book

Billingsley, J. (2016) Instances and Contexts of the Head Motif in Britain. In: Hutton, R., Ed., Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, 68–90.

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

Davis, J. (2016, April 27) Scientists Just Captured Something Extraordinary At The Moment Of Fertilization. IFLScience, IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/human-eggs-spark-moment-fertilization/.

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. (2006) Higher Education: More Information Could Help Education Determine the Extent to Which Eligible Servicemembers Serving on Active Duty Benefited from Relief Provided by Lenders and Schools. 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

Williamson, C.L. (2012) Hispanic Female Undergraduates Perception of Nursing as a Career Choice: A Phenomenological Study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Koblin, J. and Barnes, B. (2016, October 11) Seinfeld’s ‘Comedians in Cars’ Is on Market. New York Times, B5.

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