How to format your references using the Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Chandler VL (2010) Paramutation’s properties and puzzles. Science 330:628–629

A journal article with 2 authors

Tan Y, Luo Z-Q (2011) Legionella pneumophila SidD is a deAMPylase that modifies Rab1. Nature 475:506–509

A journal article with 3 authors

Lee D, Kim M, Cho K-H (2014) A design principle underlying the paradoxical roles of E3 ubiquitin ligases. Sci Rep 4:5573

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Ouzounov DG, Ahmad FR, Müller D, et al (2003) Generation of megawatt optical solitons in hollow-core photonic band-gap fibers. Science 301:1702–1704

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dooner DB (2012) Kinematic Geometry of Gearing. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Poovendran R, Roy S, Wang C (eds) (2007) Secure Localization and Time Synchronization for Wireless Sensor and Ad Hoc Networks. Springer US, Boston, MA

A chapter in an edited book

Lin S, Huang Z (2016) Systematic Analyses of Substructures. In: Huang Z (ed) Comparative Design of Structures: Concepts and Methodologies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 115–199

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 Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) Our Brains Are Naturally Prejudiced Against Minorities, Study Finds. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/our-brains-naturally-prejudiced-against-minorities/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1977) Curriculum Case Studies Are of Questionable Quality but Helped Precollege Curriculum Activities. 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

Garcia AD (2013) Long-term shifts in adolescent Nicotine reward following early methylphenidate exposure in male and female rats. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Eligon J (2016) Violence in Milwaukee Was No Shock to Some. New York Times A14

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chandler 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Chandler 2010; Tan and Luo 2011).

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

Two authors: (Tan and Luo 2011)
Three or more authors: (Ouzounov et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants
Abbreviation	Physiol. Mol. Biol. Plants
ISSN (print)	0971-5894
ISSN (online)	0974-0430
Scope	Plant Science Molecular Biology Physiology