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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Visser, A. W. (2007). Ocean science. Biomixing of the oceans? Science 316:838–839.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nisbet, E., and Weiss, R. (2010). Atmospheric science. Top-down versus bottom-up. Science 328:1241–1243.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li, Y. C., Cheng, T. H., and Gartenberg, M. R. (2001). Establishment of transcriptional silencing in the absence of DNA replication. Science 291:650–653.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Feinberg, H., Mitchell, D. A., Drickamer, K., and Weis, W. I. (2001). Structural basis for selective recognition of oligosaccharides by DC-SIGN and DC-SIGNR. Science 294:2163–2166.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smith, D. A., van de Waterbeemd, H., and Walker, D. K. (2006). Pharmacokinetics and Metabolism in Drug Design: SMITH: PHARMACOKINETICS AND METABOLISM IN DRUG DESIGN O-BK. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Popescu, E., Li, Q., Klamma, R., Leung, H., and Specht, M. eds. (2012). Advances in Web-Based Learning - ICWL 2012: 11th International Conference, Sinaia, Romania, September 2-4, 2012. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Scheerens, J. (2014). Relevance of the Findings for Educational Policy and Future Research. In Effectiveness of Time Investments in Education: Insights from a review and meta-analysis (ed. Scheerens, J.), pp. 143–157. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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/health-and-medicine/global-report-shows-how-beat-world-s-biggest-killers/ 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 (2009). Higher Education: Approaches to Attract and Fund International Students in the United States and Abroad. 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

Conner, P. A. (2009). The STAR Math test as a predictor of Arkansas BenchmarkTest scores 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

Baker, P., and Vogel, K. P. (2017). Lawyers Clash Over Strategy By West Wing. New York Times Advance Access published September 18, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Visser, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Visser, 2007; Nisbet and Weiss, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Nisbet and Weiss, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Feinberg et al., 2001)

About the journal

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