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

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

MacWilliams B (2003) Russia pulls out of Antarctic station. Nature 422:104.

A journal article with 2 authors

Robbins DW, Hartwig JF (2011) A simple, multidimensional approach to high-throughput discovery of catalytic reactions. Science 333:1423–1427.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ni S, Kanamori H, Helmberger D (2005) Seismology: energy radiation from the Sumatra earthquake. Nature 434:582.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wille M, Nägler TF, Lehmann B, Schröder S, Kramers JD (2008) Hydrogen sulphide release to surface waters at the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary. Nature 453:767–769.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gu X, Jiang N, Ji K, et al. (2017) Self-healing Control Technology for Distribution Networks. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Dezawa A, Chen P-Q, Chung J-Y (eds) (2005) State of the Art for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery. Tokyo: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Yegnasubramanian S, Nelson WG (2010) Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Analysis in Cancer Research. In S Yegnasubramanian and WB Isaacs (eds). Modern Molecular Biology: Approaches for Unbiased Discovery in Cancer Research. New York, NY: Springer, 47–66.

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 Ecology.

Blog post

Luntz S (2017) IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-computer-interface-allows-locked-in-patients-to-communicate/ (30 October 2018, date last accessed).

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 (1989) Equal Employment Opportunity: Actions Needed for FAA to Implement Committee Recommendations in the Airline Industry. 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

Chhun S (2010) Assessing the role of vacuolar trafficking in fifteen candidate env genes at the late endosome to vacuole interface in S. cerevisiae. Doctoral dissertation. 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

Stewart JB (2016) Clinton Plan for Taxes Is Expansive but Complex. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (MacWilliams 2003).
This sentence cites two references (MacWilliams 2003; Robbins and Hartwig 2011).

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

Two authors: (Robbins and Hartwig 2011)
Three or more authors: (Wille et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Plant Ecology
ISSN (print)	1752-9921
ISSN (online)	1752-993X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science Ecology