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

McLaughlin, S. (2006). Cell biology. Tools to tamper with phosphoinositides. Science 314:1402–1403.

A journal article with 2 authors

Micchelli, C. A., and Perrimon, N. (2006). Evidence that stem cells reside in the adult Drosophila midgut epithelium. Nature 439:475–479.

A journal article with 3 authors

Oxborrow, M., Breeze, J. D., and Alford, N. M. (2012). Room-temperature solid-state maser. Nature 488:353–356.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Forde, S. E., Beardmore, R. E., Gudelj, I., Arkin, S. S., Thompson, J. N., and Hurst, L. D. (2008). Understanding the limits to generalizability of experimental evolutionary models. Nature 455:220–223.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zhang, B., and Qiu, D. (2014). Sneak Circuits of Power Electronic Converters. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Patel, H. R. H., Arya, M., and Shergill, I. S. eds. (2007). Basic Science Techniques in Clinical Practice. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Tsonis, P. A., Lambris, J. D., and Del Rio-Tsonis, K. (2006). To Regeneration ... with Complement. In Current Topics in Complement (ed. Lambris, J. D.), pp. 63–70. Boston, MA: Springer US.

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

Andrew, E. (2015).IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/do-whales-commit-suicide/ 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 (2015). Results-Oriented Management: OPM Needs to Do More to Ensure Meaningful Distinctions Are Made in SES Ratings and Performance Awards. 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

Bubert, E. A. (2009). Highly extensible skin for a variable wing-span morphing aircraft utilizing pneumatic artificial muscle actuation Advance Access published 2009.

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

Kelly, S. (2001). Still Huffing, Still Puffing. New York Times Advance Access published May 20, 2001.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McLaughlin, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Micchelli and Perrimon, 2006; McLaughlin, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Micchelli and Perrimon, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Forde et al., 2008)

About the journal

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