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

Atlas RM (2002) Public health. National security and the biological research community. Science 298:753–754

A journal article with 2 authors

Schubert EF, Kim JK (2005) Solid-state light sources getting smart. Science 308:1274–1278

A journal article with 3 authors

Hadders MA, Beringer DX, Gros P (2007) Structure of C8alpha-MACPF reveals mechanism of membrane attack in complement immune defense. Science 317:1552–1554

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Coles VJ, Stukel MR, Brooks MT, et al (2017) Ocean biogeochemistry modeled with emergent trait-based genomics. Science 358:1149–1154

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sab K, Lebée A (2015) Homogenization of Heterogeneous Thin and Thick Plates. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Orey M, Jones SA, Branch RM (eds) (2013) Educational Media and Technology Yearbook: Volume 37. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Tirri K (2012) The Core of School Pedagogy. In: Niemi H, Toom A, Kallioniemi A (eds) Miracle of Education: The Principles and Practices of Teaching and Learning in Finnish Schools. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, pp 55–66

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 (2015) Greener But Not Cleaner? How Trees Can Worsen Urban Air Pollution. 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 (2007) Critical Infrastructure: Challenges Remain in Protecting Key Sectors. 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

Loden MR (2010) The rhetorical elephant in the room: How three political action committees are strategically [re]defining the U.S. Republican Party. 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

Kenigsberg B (2017) Left on Purpose. New York Times C9

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Atlas 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Atlas 2002; Schubert and Kim 2005).

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

Two authors: (Schubert and Kim 2005)
Three or more authors: (Coles et al. 2017)

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

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