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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Plant Sciences (IJPS). 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

Kreeger K 2003 Access delayed. Nature 422:96–97.

A journal article with 2 authors

Haldar A, VB Shenoy 2014 Cooling a band insulator with a metal: fermionic superfluid in a dimerized holographic lattice. Sci Rep 4:6655.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cacace F, G de Petris, A Troiani 2002 Experimental detection of tetranitrogen. Science 295:480–481.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Li Y-Y, L-S Wang, X-Z Lu, Z-J Yang, X-M Wang, C-W Zhou, J Xu, Y Qian, A-L Chen 2013 CDKAL1 gene rs7756992 A/G polymorphism and type 2 diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis of 62,567 subjects. Sci Rep 3:3131.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kondrashov AS 2017 Crumbling Genome. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Piecha T, P Schroeder-Heister eds. 2016 Advances in Proof-Theoretic Semantics. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang Q, H Li, X Zhang 2015 Cat Scratch Disease. In: Li H, editor. Radiology of Infectious Diseases: Volume 2. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. p. 63–68.

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 International Journal of Plant Sciences.

Blog post

Taub B 2016 Aug 5 Being Overweight Ages Your Brain By Ten Years. IFLScience. [accessed 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/being-overweight-ages-brain-ten-years/

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 2005 Freight Transportation: Short Sea Shipping Option Shows Importance of Systematic Approach to Public Investment Decisions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Wright NC 2010 The association between rheumatoid arthritis, bone strength, and body composition within the women’s health initiative [Doctoral dissertation]. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

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

Barron J 2016 Sep 23 A Museum Rights Its Course as Its Flagship Returns. New York Times:C23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kreeger 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kreeger 2003; Haldar and Shenoy 2014).

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

Two authors: (Haldar and Shenoy 2014)
Three or more authors: (Li et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Plant Sciences
Abbreviation	Int. J. Plant Sci.
ISSN (print)	1058-5893
ISSN (online)	1537-5315
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science