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

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

Morken JP (2014) Organic chemistry: Catalysis marches on. Nature 508:324–325

A journal article with 2 authors

Sprecher SG, Desplan C (2008) Switch of rhodopsin expression in terminally differentiated Drosophila sensory neurons. Nature 454:533–537

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu Z-K, Wang Y, Shang S (2014) Thermal expansion anomaly regulated by entropy. Sci Rep 4:7043

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mameli M, Balland B, Luján R, Lüscher C (2007) Rapid synthesis and synaptic insertion of GluR2 for mGluR-LTD in the ventral tegmental area. Science 317:530–533

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wassenaar TM (2011) Bacteria. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Follesdal A, Pogge T (eds) (2005) Real World Justice: Grounds, Principles, Human Rights, and Social Institutions. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Dehmel S, Koehler SD, Shore SE (2012) Dorsal Cochlear Nucleus: Somatosensory–Auditory Interactions in Tinnitus. In: Eggermont JJ, Zeng F-G, Popper AN, Fay RR (eds) Tinnitus. Springer, New York, NY, pp 97–119

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 Cell Reports.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) Science In Crisis: From The Sugar Scam To Brexit, Our Faith In Experts Is Fading. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/science-in-crisis-from-the-sugar-scam-to-brexit-our-faith-in-experts-is-fading/. 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 (2003) Pipeline Safety: Systematic Process Needed to Evaluate Outcomes of Research and Development Program. 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

Pope C (2010) Words in the Garden. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute

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

Walsh MW, Cooper M (2013) Big Teachers’ Fund to Sell Its Gun Shares. New York Times B3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Morken 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Sprecher and Desplan 2008; Morken 2014).

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

Two authors: (Sprecher and Desplan 2008)
Three or more authors: (Mameli et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Cell Reports
Abbreviation	Plant Cell Rep.
ISSN (print)	0721-7714
ISSN (online)	1432-203X
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science General Medicine