How to format your references using the Molecular Plant citation style

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

Fabbiano, G. (2005). Astronomy. The hunt for intermediate-mass black holes. Science 307:533–534.

A journal article with 2 authors

Waterhouse, P. M., and Fusaro, A. F. (2006). Plant science. Viruses face a double defense by plant small RNAs. Science 313:54–55.

A journal article with 3 authors

Blüher, M., Kahn, B. B., and Kahn, C. R. (2003). Extended longevity in mice lacking the insulin receptor in adipose tissue. Science 299:572–574.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wang, H., Wang, L., Erdjument-Bromage, H., Vidal, M., Tempst, P., Jones, R. S., and Zhang, Y. (2004). Role of histone H2A ubiquitination in Polycomb silencing. Nature 431:873–878.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hamdan, M., and Righetti, P. G. (2005). Proteomics Today. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ogras, U. Y. (2013). Modeling, Analysis and Optimization of Network-on-Chip Communication Architectures. (ed. Marculescu, R.) Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Cipollone, E., Cuomo, F., and Abbagnale, A. (2010). A Distributed Procedure for IEEE 802.15.4 PAN Coordinator Election in Emergency Scenarios. In The Internet of Things: 20th Tyrrhenian Workshop on Digital Communications (ed. Giusto, D.), Iera, A.), Morabito, G.), and Atzori, L.), pp. 39–48. New York, NY: Springer.

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 Plant.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014).IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/devil-rays-dive-astonishing-depths/ Accessed October 30, 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). Commercial Use of Space: Many Grantees Making Progress, but NASA Oversight Could Be Improved. 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

Tercero, N. (2010). Characterization and application of morpholino monolayers in nucleic acid diagnostics Advance Access published 2010.

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

Walsh, M. W. (2015). Puerto Rico Utility and Bondholders Agree to Keep Working on a Deal. New York Times Advance Access published December 19, 2015.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fabbiano, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Fabbiano, 2005; Waterhouse and Fusaro, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Waterhouse and Fusaro, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Plant
Abbreviation	Mol. Plant
ISSN (print)	1674-2052
ISSN (online)	1752-9867
Scope	Plant Science Molecular Biology