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

Bahcall O (2015) Precision medicine. Nature 526:335

A journal article with 2 authors

Bouwens RJ, Illingworth GD (2006) Rapid evolution of the most luminous galaxies during the first 900 million years. Nature 443:189–192

A journal article with 3 authors

Labidi J, Cartigny P, Moreira M (2013) Non-chondritic sulphur isotope composition of the terrestrial mantle. Nature 501:208–211

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Yu X-Y, Meng Q-Q, Luo T, et al (2013) Facet-dependent electrochemical properties of Co3O4 nanocrystals toward heavy metal ions. Sci Rep 3:2886

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Spector P (2016) Understanding Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

George-Hyslop PHS, Mobley WCC, Christen Y (eds) (2009) Intracellular Traffic and Neurodegenerative Disorders. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Scott JR, Effenberger AJ, Hatch JJ (2014) Influence of Atmospheric Pressure and Composition on LIBS. In: Musazzi S, Perini U (eds) Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy: Theory and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 91–116

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 D (2017) The Unknown Crocodiles. 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 (2010) Telecommunications: Information on Participation in the Rural Health Care Pilot Program (GAO-11-25SP, November 2010), an E-supplement to GAO-11-27. 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

Victoria FC (2017) One on One. 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

Wasik JF (2017) How to Get Financial Advice in Your Best Interest. New York Times BU6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bahcall 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Bouwens and Illingworth 2006; Bahcall 2015).

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

Two authors: (Bouwens and Illingworth 2006)
Three or more authors: (Yu et al. 2013)

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