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

Cyranoski D (2001) Ecologists score victory over controversial dyke project. Nature 410:619

A journal article with 2 authors

Wookey J, Helffrich G (2008) Inner-core shear-wave anisotropy and texture from an observation of PKJKP waves. Nature 454:873–876

A journal article with 3 authors

Bard E, Rostek F, Ménot-Combes G (2004) Paleoclimate. A better radiocarbon clock. Science 303:178–179

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Liu Y, Latremoliere A, Li X, et al (2018) Touch and tactile neuropathic pain sensitivity are set by corticospinal projections. Nature 561:547–550

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bonem JM (2011) Problem Solving for Process Operators and Specialists. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Shi YQ (ed) (2012) Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security VII. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Wester R (2011) Energy Transport and Heat Conduction. In: Poprawe R (ed) Tailored Light 2: Laser Application Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 43–62

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 E (2015) Thunder God Vine Extract Makes Obese Mice Rapidly Shed The Pounds. In: IFLScience. 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 (1994) Strategic Mobility: Serious Problems Remain in U.S. Deployment Capabilities. 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

Khanabadi Ghehi M (2017) Global Operation of Integrated Decentralized Power Systems. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State 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

Vecsey G (2009) For Rodriguez, It’s a No-Brainer: Just Play. New York Times D1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cyranoski 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Cyranoski 2001; Wookey and Helffrich 2008).

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

Two authors: (Wookey and Helffrich 2008)
Three or more authors: (Liu et al. 2018)

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