How to format your references using the Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology. 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
Risbey J (2015) Earth science: Free and forced climate variations. Nature 517:562–563
A journal article with 2 authors
Bucknall DG, Anderson HL (2003) Chemistry. Polymers get organized. Science 302:1904–1905
A journal article with 3 authors
Borgia G, Coyle BJ, Keagy J (2012) Comment on “Illusions promote mating success in great bowerbirds.” Science 337:292; author reply 292
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Lemmers RJLF, van der Vliet PJ, Klooster R, et al (2010) A unifying genetic model for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. Science 329:1650–1653

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ahlemeyer-Stubbe A, Coleman S (2014) A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
Knight C (2016) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans People (LGBT) and the Criminal Justice System. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London
A chapter in an edited book
Dietz HG, Young BD (2010) MIMD Interpretation on a GPU. In: Gao GR, Pollock LL, Cavazos J, Li X (eds) Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing: 22nd International Workshop, LCPC 2009, Newark, DE, USA, October 8-10, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 65–79

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 Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology.

Blog post
Andrew E (2015) Boldly Going Into Space for 1,000 Days Presents a Series of Health Risks. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/boldly-going-space-1000-days-presents-series-health-risks/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1986) Efforts To Comply With P.L. 94-142 and Selected Youth Services Administration Management Functions. 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
Julfayan-Gregorian V (2017) Success Strategies of First-Generation Foreign-Born Leaders. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University

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
Oestreich JR (2016) In the Classical Music World, Sept. 11 Anniversary Will Pass With Little Notice. New York Times C4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Risbey 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Bucknall and Anderson 2003; Risbey 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Bucknall and Anderson 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Lemmers et al. 2010)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology
AbbreviationJ. Plant Biochem. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)0971-7811
ISSN (online)0974-1275
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Plant Science
Biotechnology

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