How to format your references using the Botany citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for 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 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

Greffet, J.-J. 2005. Applied physics. Nanoantennas for light emission. Science 308(5728): 1561–1563.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kane, C.L., and Mele, E.J. 2006. Physics. A new spin on the insulating state. Science 314(5806): 1692–1693.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cronberg, N., Natcheva, R., and Hedlund, K. 2006. Microarthropods mediate sperm transfer in mosses. Science 313(5791): 1255.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Teo, K.B.K., Minoux, E., Hudanski, L., Peauger, F., Schnell, J.-P., Gangloff, L., Legagneux, P., Dieumegard, D., Amaratunga, G.A.J., and Milne, W.I. 2005. Microwave devices: carbon nanotubes as cold cathodes. Nature 437(7061): 968.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tue, N.V., Reichel, M., and Fischer, M. 2016. Berechnung und Bemessung von Betonbrücken. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin, Germany.

An edited book

Chen, H. 2007. ZK^TM: Ajax Without JavaScript^TM Framework. Edited ByR. Cheng. Apress, Berkeley, CA.

A chapter in an edited book

Morgan, I.G., Rose, K.A., and Ashby, R.S. 2014. Animal Models of Experimental Myopia: Limitations and Synergies with Studies on Human Myopia. In Pathologic Myopia. Edited by R.F. Spaide, K. Ohno-Matsui, and L.A. Yannuzzi. Springer, New York, NY. pp. 39–58.

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 Botany.

Blog post

Andrews, R. 2016, December 27. Cheetahs Are Tumbling Toward Extinction. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/cheetahs-tumbling-toward-extinction/ [accessed 30 October 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. 2001. U.S. Infrastructure: Funding Trends and Federal Agencies’ Investment Estimates. 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

Dean, D.O. 2012. A discrete-time multiple event process survival mixture (MEPSUM) model for investigating the order and timing of multiple non-repeatable events. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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

Hartocollis, A. 2014, July 16. At Hospital, Its Ex-C.E.O. Finds Lucrative Work. New York Times: A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Greffet 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Greffet 2005; Kane and Mele 2006).

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

Two authors: (Kane and Mele 2006)
Three or more authors: (Teo et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Botany
Abbreviation	Botany
ISSN (print)	1916-2790
ISSN (online)	1916-2804
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science Ecology