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

Dickson D (2000) Mathematicians chase the seven million-dollar proofs. Nature 405:383

A journal article with 2 authors

Waterhouse PM, Hellens RP (2015) Plant biology: Coding in non-coding RNAs. Nature 520:41–42

A journal article with 3 authors

Luo Y, Yang Y, Chen Z (2014) Self-tuning wireless power transmission scheme based on on-line scattering parameters measurement and two-side power matching. Sci Rep 4:4332

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Nitta R, Kikkawa M, Okada Y, Hirokawa N (2004) KIF1A alternately uses two loops to bind microtubules. Science 305:678–683

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stephanie Hammer (2013) Architects of Electronic Trading. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Nelson T, Winawer H (eds) (2014) Critical Topics in Family Therapy: AFTA Monograph Series Highlights. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Heimrich T, Reichelt K, Rusch H, et al (2005) Modelling and Streaming Spatiotemporal Audio Data. In: Meersman R, Tari Z, Herrero P (eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2005: OTM 2005 Workshops: OTM Confederated Internationl Workshops and Posters, AWeSOMe, CAMS, GADA, MIOS+INTEROP, ORM, PhDS, SeBGIS, SWWS, and WOSE 2005, Agia Napa, Cyprus, October 31 - November 4, 2005. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 7–8

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 E (2013) Rooster-like comb discovered on duck-billed dinosaur. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/rooster-comb-discovered-duck-billed-dinosaur/. 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 (1987) Deaf Education: The National Mission of Gallaudet’s Elementary and Secondary Schools. 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

Mills J (2017) Catherine of Siena: No Saint Is an Island. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois 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

de la MERCED MJ (2017) Atlanta Firm Lures Veteran Deal Maker Back to Law. New York Times B5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dickson 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Dickson 2000; Waterhouse and Hellens 2015).

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

Two authors: (Waterhouse and Hellens 2015)
Three or more authors: (Nitta et al. 2004)

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