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 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

Smaglik P (2002) Norway: Turning oil into science. Nature 417:4–5

A journal article with 2 authors

Louf R, Barthelemy M (2014) How congestion shapes cities: from mobility patterns to scaling. Sci Rep 4:5561

A journal article with 3 authors

Palenzuela C, Lehner L, Liebling SL (2010) Dual jets from binary black holes. Science 329:927–930

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Revilla RI, Li X-J, Yang Y-L, Wang C (2014) Large electric field-enhanced-hardness effect in a SiO2 film. Sci Rep 4:4523

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rezaee Z (2011) Financial Services Firms. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Calin O (2005) Geometric Mechanics on Riemannian Manifolds: Applications to Partial Differential Equations. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA

A chapter in an edited book

Yokoi H, Matsumura K, Sumi Y (2013) Visualization of Life Patterns through Deformation of Maps Based on Users’ Movement Data. In: Yoshida T, Kou G, Skowron A, et al. (eds) Active Media Technology: 9th International Conference, AMT 2013, Maebashi, Japan, October 29-31, 2013, Proceedings. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 37–45

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

Andrew D (2016) Will The Great Barrier Reef Recover From Its Worst-Ever Bleaching? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/will-the-great-barrier-reef-recover-from-its-worstever-bleaching/. 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 (2011) Information Technology: Continued Improvements in Investment Oversight and Management Can Yield Billions in Savings. 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

Rogers RC (2010) Documenting cultural transition through contact archaeology in Tíhoo, Mérida, Yucatán. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic 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

Wagner J (2016) Cespedes’s Bat Gives Mets a Much-Needed Lift. New York Times B14

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik 2002; Louf and Barthelemy 2014).

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

Two authors: (Louf and Barthelemy 2014)
Three or more authors: (Revilla et al. 2014)

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