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:

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

Price, R.M., 2012. IBI* series winner. How we got here: an inquiry-based activity about human evolution. Science 338, 1554–1555.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tilman, D., Isbell, F., 2015. Biodiversity: Recovery as nitrogen declines. Nature 528, 336–337.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shay, J.W., Reddel, R.R., Wright, W.E., 2012. Cancer. Cancer and telomeres--an ALTernative to telomerase. Science 336, 1388–1390.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Gao, X.-R., Zhang, S.-L., Yang, Y.-F., Han, G.-R., 2014. FEN1 -69G>A and 4150G>T polymorphisms and cancer risk in Chinese population. Sci. Rep. 4, 6183.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sauter, M., 2013. 3G, 4G and Beyond-Bringing Networks, Devices and the Web Together. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Yang, Q., Zhang, J.-M., Zheng, H., Yao, Y. (Eds.), 2013. Constitutive Modeling of Geomaterials: Advances and New Applications, Springer Series in Geomechanics and Geoengineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Newton, A., Vickers, A., 2007. The Benefits of Electronic Safety Cases, in: Redmill, F., Anderson, T. (Eds.), The Safety of Systems: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Safety-Critical Systems Symposium, Bristol, UK, 13–15 February 2007. Springer, London, pp. 69–82.

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

Hale, T., 2017. The Science Behind Why This Photograph Looks Fake [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/the-science-behind-why-this-photograph-looks-fake/ (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. Attack Warning: Status of the Survivable Communications Integration System (No. IMTEC-92-61BR). 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

Rice, H.J., 2010. Before the Storm: Evacuation Intention and Audience Segmentation (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Antilla, S., 2015. Gender Bias Case Against Sterling Jewelers Can Proceed. New York Times B8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Price, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Price, 2012; Tilman and Isbell, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Tilman and Isbell, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Gao et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics
Abbreviation	Perspect. Plant Ecol. Evol. Syst.
ISSN (print)	1433-8319
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science

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