How to format your references using the Plant Biotechnology Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Plant Biotechnology Journal (PBJ). 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

Ott, E. (2008) Obituary: Edward N. Lorenz (1917-2008). Nature, 453, 300.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sedlak, D.L. and von Gunten, U. (2011) Chemistry. The chlorine dilemma. Science, 331, 42–43.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jasny, B.R., Kelner, K.L., and Pennisi, E. (2008) Genetics of behavior. From genes to social behavior. Introduction. Science, 322, 891.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Yoon, H., Yamashita, M., Ata, S., Futaba, D.N., Yamada, T., and Hata, K. (2014) Controlling exfoliation in order to minimize damage during dispersion of long SWCNTs for advanced composites. Sci. Rep., 4, 3907.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kunz, R.G. (2009) Environmental Calculations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Roth-Berghofer, T.R., Göker, M.H., and Güvenir, H.A. eds. (2006) Advances in Case-Based Reasoning: 8th European Conference, ECCBR 2006 Fethiye, Turkey, September 4-7, 2006 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Fukuda, T., Arai, F., and Nakajima, M. (2013) Micromanipulation System under Optical Microscope. In: Micro-Nanorobotic Manipulation Systems and Their Applications (Arai,F. and Nakajima,M., eds) , pp. 107–136. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014) Genetic Links Found Between Schizophrenia And Cannabis Use. IFLScience.

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 (2008) National Transportation Safety Board: Progress Made in Management Practices, Investigation Priorities, Training Center Use, and Information Security, But These Areas Continue to Need Improvement. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Young, W.B. (2017) First-Generation Undergraduate Researchers: Engaging and Validating Cultural Wealth-Based Self-Authors.

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

Pilon, M. and Craig, S. (2013) Safety Concerns Stoke Criticism of Kennel Club. New York Times, SP1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ott, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Ott, 2008; Sedlak and von Gunten, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Sedlak and von Gunten, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Yoon et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Biotechnology Journal
Abbreviation	Plant Biotechnol. J.
ISSN (print)	1467-7644
ISSN (online)	1467-7652
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Biotechnology