How to format your references using the Flora citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Flora. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Boyd, R.W., 2015. Nuclear physics: Neutrons with a twist. Nature 525, 462–464.
A journal article with 2 authors
Mukhopadhyay, S., Linstedt, A.D., 2012. Manganese blocks intracellular trafficking of Shiga toxin and protects against Shiga toxicosis. Science 335, 332–335.
A journal article with 3 authors
Gupta, A., Zadafiya, P., Mahalakshmi, R., 2014. Differential contribution of tryptophans to the folding and stability of the attachment invasion locus transmembrane β-barrel from Yersinia pestis. Sci. Rep. 4, 6508.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Kaneko, R., Abe, M., Hirabayashi, T., Uchimura, A., Sakimura, K., Yanagawa, Y., Yagi, T., 2014. Expansion of stochastic expression repertoire by tandem duplication in mouse Protocadherin-α cluster. Sci. Rep. 4, 6263.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Hessel, V., Löwe, H., Müller, A., Kolb, G., 2005. Chemical Micro Process Engineering. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.
An edited book
Echizen, I., Kunihiro, N., Sasaki, R. (Eds.), 2010. Advances in Information and Computer Security: 5th International Workshop on Security, IWSEC 2010, Kobe, Japan, November 22-24, 2010. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Amer, S.A.K., 2015. The Impact of Endometrioma and Its Surgical Treatment on Ovarian Reserve and Reproductive Performance, in: Metwally, M., Li, T.-C. (Eds.), Reproductive Surgery in Assisted Conception. Springer, London, pp. 43–57.

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 Flora.

Blog post
Carpineti, A., 2017. Astronomers Find Monster Galaxy That lived Fast And Died Young [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-find-monster-galaxy-that-lived-fast-and-died-young/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1973. Protest Alleging Agency Did Not Evaluate Proposals Fairly (No. B-178220). 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
Ware, S.C., 2014. Alcohol consumption and breast cancer risk in older women: A modifiable lifestyle risk factor (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
Grynbaum, M.M., 2013. For de Blasio, So Many Jobs to Fill, So Little Time. 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 (Boyd, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Boyd, 2015; Mukhopadhyay and Linstedt, 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Mukhopadhyay and Linstedt, 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Kaneko et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleFlora
AbbreviationFlora
ISSN (print)0367-2530
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Plant Science
Ecology

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