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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Plant Research. 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

Blatter G (2000) Schrodinger’s cat is now fat. Nature 406:25–26

A journal article with 2 authors

Sanderson WC, Scherbov S (2005) Average remaining lifetimes can increase as human populations age. Nature 435:811–813

A journal article with 3 authors

Exadaktylos F, Espín AM, Brañas-Garza P (2013) Experimental subjects are not different. Sci Rep 3:1213

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Rocks O, Peyker A, Kahms M, et al (2005) An acylation cycle regulates localization and activity of palmitoylated Ras isoforms. Science 307:1746–1752

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Albright RD (2013) Death of the Chesapeake. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Ring J, Przybilla B, Ruzicka T (eds) (2006) Handbook of Atopic Eczema, Second Edition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Wessels H (2011) Statistics in the South African School Curriculum. In: Batanero C, Burrill G, Reading C (eds) Teaching Statistics in School Mathematics-Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education: A Joint ICMI/IASE Study: The 18th ICMI Study. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 21–25

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Here’s What 1930s Fashion Designers Thought We’d Be Wearing In The Year 2000. 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 (1993) Transportation Infrastructure: Better Tools Needed for Making Decisions on Using ISTEA Funds Flexibly. 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

Crider MC (2012) The social and environmental effects of shrimp mariculture: Case studies of two coastal villages in Ecuador. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic 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

Billard M (2010) Jodi Arnold Expands Her Empire. New York Times E5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Blatter 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Blatter 2000; Sanderson and Scherbov 2005).

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

Two authors: (Sanderson and Scherbov 2005)
Three or more authors: (Rocks et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Plant Research
Abbreviation	J. Plant Res.
ISSN (print)	0918-9440
ISSN (online)	1618-0860
Scope	Plant Science