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

Türler A 2015 Nuclear chemistry: Lawrencium bridges a knowledge gap. Nature 520:166–167.

A journal article with 2 authors

Piketty T, E Saez 2014 Inequality in the long run. Science 344:838–843.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ren A, KR Rajashankar, DJ Patel 2012 Fluoride ion encapsulation by Mg2+ ions and phosphates in a fluoride riboswitch. Nature 486:85–89.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Vlad A, N Singh, J Rolland, S Melinte, PM Ajayan, J-F Gohy 2014 Hybrid supercapacitor-battery materials for fast electrochemical charge storage. Sci Rep 4:4315.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Coenen T 2008 Essentials of Corporate Fraud. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Jung G ed. 2012 Fluorescent Proteins II: Application of Fluorescent Protein Technology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Arslan-Ayaydin Ö, J Thewissen 2015 The Impact of Environmental Strengths and Concerns on the Accounting Performance of Firms in the Energy Sector. In: Dorsman A, Westerman W, Simpson JL, editors. Energy Technology and Valuation Issues. Cham: Springer International Publishing. p. 83–107.

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

Hale T 2015 Nov 18 The Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks TONIGHT - Here’s How To Watch. IFLScience. [accessed 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/space/speedy-leonid-meteor-shower-will-hit-skies-week/

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 1990 High Definition Television: The Effects of Standards on U.S. Entertainment Industries. 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

Vu MH 2010 Efficiency of pair-wise and multiple alignment algorithms in computational biology [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Al-Batati S, B Hubbard 2016 Nov 15 Bank Defends Dealing With Al Qaeda When It Called the Shots. New York Times:A8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Türler 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Piketty and Saez 2014; Türler 2015).

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

Two authors: (Piketty and Saez 2014)
Three or more authors: (Vlad et al. 2014)

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