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:

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
Mooers AO (2014) Biodiversity: Supply and demand. Nature 509:171–172.
A journal article with 2 authors
Phillips-Silver J, Trainor LJ (2005) Feeling the beat: movement influences infant rhythm perception. Science 308:1430.
A journal article with 3 authors
Gavazzi G, Bisio A, Pozzo T (2013) Time perception of visual motion is tuned by the motor representation of human actions. Sci Rep 3:1168.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Hublin J-J, Ben-Ncer A, Bailey SE, et al. (2018) Author Correction: New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature 558:E6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Papadimitriou GI, Tsimoulas PA, Obaidat MS, Pomportsis AS (2005) Multiwavelength Optical LANs. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
McGrath MJ (2013) Sensor Technologies: Healthcare, Wellness, and Environmental Applications. CN Scanaill (ed). Berkeley, CA: Apress.
A chapter in an edited book
Grigorian A, Virgilio C de, Hari DM (2015) Abnormal Screening Mammogram. In C de Virgilio, PN Frank, and A Grigorian (eds). Surgery: A Case Based Clinical Review. New York, NY: Springer, 37–44.

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 D (2016) IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/the-social-life-of-sea-mammals-is-key-to-their-survival/ (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 (1976) Student Attrition at the Five Federal Service Academies. Enclosure B: 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
Mathes MD (2014) Exploring Factors That Enabled Financial Advisors and Their Firms to Improve Professional Performance After 2008. Doctoral dissertation. Northcentral 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
Maslin J (2017) There’s a New Detective in Town, and She’s Fierce. 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 (Mooers 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Phillips-Silver and Trainor 2005; Mooers 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Phillips-Silver and Trainor 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Hublin et al. 2018)

About the journal

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

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