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 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

Asplund, M. 2008. Astronomy. The shining make-up of our star. Science 322(5898): 51–52.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hilf, R.J.C., and Dutzler, R. 2009. Structure of a potentially open state of a proton-activated pentameric ligand-gated ion channel. Nature 457(7225): 115–118.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ebel, C., Mariconti, L., and Gruissem, W. 2004. Plant retinoblastoma homologues control nuclear proliferation in the female gametophyte. Nature 429(6993): 776–780.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Nasrin, F., Rahman, M.A., Masuda, A., Ohe, K., Takeda, J.-I., and Ohno, K. 2014. HnRNP C, YB-1 and hnRNP L coordinately enhance skipping of human MUSK exon 10 to generate a Wnt-insensitive MuSK isoform. Sci. Rep. 4: 6841.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bouvier, J.-M., and Campanella, O.H. 2014. Extrusion Processing Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Prieto, V.G. (Editor). 2015. Precision Molecular Pathology of Dermatologic Diseases. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang, K., and Shen, X. 2015. Health Data Sharing with Misbehavior Detection. In Security and Privacy for Mobile Healthcare Networks. Edited by X. (sherman) Shen. Springer International Publishing, Cham. pp. 47–80.

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

Hale, T. 2017, May 12. Yep, That Viral Video Of A Shark Attacking A Porn Star Was Bullshit. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/yep-that-viral-video-of-a-shark-attacking-a-porn-star-was-bullshit/ [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. 2004. Unfunded Mandates: Analysis of Reform Act Coverage. 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

Lima, A.A. 2009. Racial and cultural identity formation of low-income Brazilian youth of African descent through their experiences and perceptions in formal and informal schools. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kenigsberg, B. 2017, June 29. The Skyjacker’s Tale. New York Times: C8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Asplund 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Asplund 2008; Hilf and Dutzler 2009).

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

Two authors: (Hilf and Dutzler 2009)
Three or more authors: (Nasrin et al. 2014)

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