How to format your references using the Molecular Breeding citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular Breeding. 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

Hollingsworth MD (2009) Chemistry. Calcite biocomposites up close. Science 326:1194–1195

A journal article with 2 authors

Hoekstra HE, Price T (2004) Evolution. Parallel evolution is in the genes. Science 303:1779–1781

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu D, Amagai S, Bricken J (2012) Science education. Engaging teachers, scientists, and multimedia to promote learning. Science 336:1509

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Foster MA, Salem R, Geraghty DF, et al (2008) Silicon-chip-based ultrafast optical oscilloscope. Nature 456:81–84

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stein PD (2016) Pulmonary Embolism. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Carlsson C (2011) Possibility for Decision: A Possibilistic Approach to Real Life Decisions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Manias E, Utracki LA (2014) Thermodynamics of Polymer Blends. In: Utracki LA, Wilkie CA (eds) Polymer Blends Handbook. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 171–289

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 Molecular Breeding.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Here’s What It Looks Like When Evolution Gets Weird. 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 (1995) D.C. Public School Enrollment. 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

Tourijigian L (2015) Fiscal Changes at Dunbar Elementary. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois 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

Waldstein D, Rothenberg B (2016) They Built a Roof. It Got Loud. Now What? New York Times D1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hollingsworth 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Hoekstra and Price 2004; Hollingsworth 2009).

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

Two authors: (Hoekstra and Price 2004)
Three or more authors: (Foster et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Breeding
Abbreviation	Mol. Breed.
ISSN (print)	1380-3743
ISSN (online)	1572-9788
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Biotechnology Genetics Molecular Biology