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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Plant Biotechnology Reports. 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

Retallack GJ (2013) Ediacaran life on land. Nature 493:89–92

A journal article with 2 authors

Forcada J, Hoffman JI (2014) Climate change selects for heterozygosity in a declining fur seal population. Nature 511:462–465

A journal article with 3 authors

Lim HS, Rim YS, Kim HJ (2014) Photoresist-free fully self-patterned transparent amorphous oxide thin-film transistors obtained by sol-gel process. Sci Rep 4:4544

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Rabinowitz D, Helin E, Lawrence K, Pravdo S (2000) A reduced estimate of the number of kilometre-sized near-Earth asteroids. Nature 403:165–166

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pashley RM, Karaman ME (2005) Applied Colloid and Surface Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Spreemann D (2012) Electromagnetic Vibration Energy Harvesting Devices: Architectures, Design, Modeling and Optimization. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

De A, Bose R, Kumar A, Mozumdar S (2014) Pesticide Formulations. In: Bose R, Kumar A, Mozumdar S (eds) Targeted Delivery of Pesticides Using Biodegradable Polymeric Nanoparticles. Springer India, New Delhi, pp 15–23

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 Reports.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) Parkinson’s Disease Could Soon Be Detected With An Eye Test. 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 (2001) Federal Highway Funding by Program and Type of Roadway, With Related Safety Data. 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

Birtler ER (2014) Group therapy and knowledge of neuroplastic principles: The impact of health literacy on client locus of control in a therapy setting. 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

Vecsey G (2013) A Roof Is Planned, but It’s a Waiting Game for Fans and Players. New York Times D4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Retallack 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Retallack 2013; Forcada and Hoffman 2014).

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

Two authors: (Forcada and Hoffman 2014)
Three or more authors: (Rabinowitz et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Biotechnology Reports
Abbreviation	Plant Biotechnol. Rep.
ISSN (print)	1863-5466
ISSN (online)	1863-5474
Scope	Plant Science Biotechnology