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

Smith C (2003) A question of form. Nature 422:341.

A journal article with 2 authors

Livneh U, Zador A (2014) Sensory systems: Sound processing takes motor control. Nature 513:180–181.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sword GA, Lorch PD, Gwynne DT (2005) Insect behaviour: migratory bands give crickets protection. Nature 433:703.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Onishi Y, Ueha T, Kawamoto T, et al. (2014) Regulation of mitochondrial proliferation by PGC-1α induces cellular apoptosis in musculoskeletal malignancies. Sci Rep 4:3916.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Exposito E, Diop C (2014) Smart SOA Platforms in Cloud Computing Architectures. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Chen X (2014) Lanthanide-Doped Luminescent Nanomaterials: From Fundamentals to Bioapplications. Y Liu and D Tu (eds). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Maggino F (2006) Perception and Evaluation of the Quality of Life in Florence, Italy. In MJ Sirgy, D Rahtz, and D Swain (eds). Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases II. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 75–125.

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

Andrew E (2015) IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/watch-out-fridays-blue-moon/ (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 (2010) Propane and Heating Oil: Federal Oversight of the Propane Education and Research Council and National Oilheat Research Alliance Should Be Strengthened. 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

Liang M (2012) Information, communication and wayfinding: Technology shows us the world. 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

Vecsey G (2013) Back Home, Still Taking on the World. New York Times B8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smith 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Smith 2003; Livneh and Zador 2014).

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

Two authors: (Livneh and Zador 2014)
Three or more authors: (Onishi et al. 2014)

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