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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Plant Growth Regulation. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Good MF (2013) Immunology. Pasteur approach to a malaria vaccine may take the lead. Science 341:1352–1353
A journal article with 2 authors
Smaglik P, Smith A (2002) A route to flexible working. Nature 415:4–6
A journal article with 3 authors
Vidale JE, Dodge DA, Earle PS (2000) Slow differential rotation of the Earth’s inner core indicated by temporal changes in scattering. Nature 405:445–448
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Fu W, Du F-H, Su J, et al (2014) In situ catalytic growth of large-area multilayered graphene/MoS2 heterostructures. Sci Rep 4:4673

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Kissell J (2009) Mac® Security Bible. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA
An edited book
Ciardo G, Darondeau P (eds) (2005) Applications and Theory of Petri Nets 2005: 26th International Conference, ICATPN 2005, Miami, USA, June 20-25, 2005. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Weng M (2016) “Franco’s Children”: Childhood Memory as National Allegory. In: Millei Z, Imre R (eds) Childhood and Nation: Interdisciplinary Engagements. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, NY, pp 53–71

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 Growth Regulation.

Blog post
Andrew E (2016) What Mongol History Predicts For The New Season Of Game of Thrones. In: IFLScience. 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 (1991) Transportation: Status of GAO’s Open Recommendations on Transportation Policies and Programs. 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
McDuffie CA (2017) Melodies of intervention: Music therapy for transitional-age youth: A grant proposal. 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
Lehman S (2017) And Now for the Good News. New York Times A2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Good 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik and Smith 2002; Good 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Smaglik and Smith 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Fu et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Plant Growth Regulation
AbbreviationJ. Plant Growth Regul.
ISSN (print)0721-7595
ISSN (online)1435-8107
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Plant Science

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