How to format your references using the Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 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
Mandavilli, A., 2005. The coming epidemic. Nature 436, 496–498.
A journal article with 2 authors
Gweon, H., Schulz, L., 2011. 16-month-olds rationally infer causes of failed actions. Science 332, 1524.
A journal article with 3 authors
Thompson, J.K., Rainville, S., Pritchard, D.E., 2004. Cyclotron frequency shifts arising from polarization forces. Nature 430, 58–61.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Gao, Y., Ferguson, D.O., Xie, W., Manis, J.P., Sekiguchi, J., Frank, K.M., Chaudhuri, J., Horner, J., DePinho, R.A., Alt, F.W., 2000. Interplay of p53 and DNA-repair protein XRCC4 in tumorigenesis, genomic stability and development. Nature 404, 897–900.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Prutchi, D., Prutchi, S.R., 2012. Exploring Quantum Physics Through Hands-On Projects. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Voronkov, A. (Ed.), 2008. Rewriting Techniques and Applications: 19th International Conference, RTA 2008 Hagenberg, Austria, July 15-17, 2008 Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Casey, T.K., 2010. Architecture, in: Sepp, H.R., Embree, L. (Eds.), Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics, Contributions To Phenomenology. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 25–28.

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 Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2015. The Hunt For ET Will Boost Australian Astronomy [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/hunt-et-will-boost-australian-astronomy/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1992. Truck Safety: The Safety of Longer Combination Vehicles Is Unknown (No. RCED-92-66). 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
Geiselman, C.K., 2010. Diet and reproduction of sympatric nectar-feeding bat species (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) in French Guiana (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University, New York, NY.

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
Egan, J., Saunders, G., 2015. Choose Your Own Adventure. New York Times MM74.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mandavilli, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Gweon and Schulz, 2011; Mandavilli, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Gweon and Schulz, 2011)
  • Three or more authors: (Gao et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titlePerspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics
AbbreviationPerspect. Plant Ecol. Evol. Syst.
ISSN (print)1433-8319
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Plant Science

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