How to format your references using the Molecular Plant Pathology citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Marciano, W.J. (2014) Particle physics: quarks are not ambidextrous. Nature, 506, 43–44.
A journal article with 2 authors
Queller, D.C. & Strassmann, J.E. (2002) The many selves of social insects. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296, 311–313.
A journal article with 3 authors
Paradise, J., Andrews, L. & Holbrook, T. (2005) Intellectual property. Patents on human genes: an analysis of scope and claims. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307, 1566–1567.
A journal article with 10 or more authors
Maier, L., Pruteanu, M., Kuhn, M., Zeller, G., Telzerow, A., Anderson, E.E., et al. (2018) Extensive impact of non-antibiotic drugs on human gut bacteria. Nature, 555, 623–628.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Khatib, T. & Elmenreich, W. (2016) Modeling of Photovoltaic Systems Using MATLAB ®. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Lee, C.-F. (2016) Essentials of Excel, Excel VBA, SAS and Minitab for Statistical and Financial Analyses. Lee, J., Chang, J.-R., and Tai, T. (Eds.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Felici, G., Sun, F. & Truemper, K. (2006) Learning Logic Formulas and Related Error Distributions. In: Triantaphyllou, E. and Felici, G. (Eds.) Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Approaches Based on Rule Induction Techniques Massive Computing. Boston, MA: Springer US, pp. 193–226.

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 Pathology.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2014) Scientists Trace Jewish History Using DNA. IFLScience.

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 (1993) Developing and Using Questionnaires. 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
Li, S. (2009) Semiconductor and metal oxide nanoparticles: Synthesis, physical properties and industrial application. Doctoral dissertation, New York, NY, Columbia 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
Kelly, C. (2017) From Spain to Romania, There’s No Respite From the Heat. New York Times, TR2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marciano, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Marciano, 2014; Queller and Strassmann, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Queller and Strassmann, 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Maier et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleMolecular Plant Pathology
AbbreviationMol. Plant Pathol.
ISSN (print)1464-6722
ISSN (online)1364-3703
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Plant Science
Soil Science
Molecular Biology

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