How to format your references using the Plant Ecology citation style

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

Aragón AM (2013) A measure for the impact of research. Sci Rep 3:1649

A journal article with 2 authors

Yadlapalli S, Yamashita YM (2013) Chromosome-specific nonrandom sister chromatid segregation during stem-cell division. Nature 498:251–254

A journal article with 3 authors

Usuki F, Fujimura M, Yamashita A (2013) Endoplasmic reticulum stress preconditioning attenuates methylmercury-induced cellular damage by inducing favorable stress responses. Sci Rep 3:2346

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ibrahim F, Rohr J, Jeong W-J, Hesson J, Cerutti H (2006) Untemplated oligoadenylation promotes degradation of RISC-cleaved transcripts. Science 314:1893

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cooper N, Forrest K, Cramp P (2008) Essential Guide to Generic Skills. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Erdmann VA, Barciszewski J (eds) (2013) DNA and RNA Nanobiotechnologies in Medicine: Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Furneaux B (2012) Task-Technology Fit Theory: A Survey and Synopsis of the Literature. In: Dwivedi YK, Wade MR, Schneberger SL (eds) Information Systems Theory: Explaining and Predicting Our Digital Society, Vol. 1. Springer, New York, NY, pp 87–106

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 Ecology.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Magnetar Formation: It’s A Game Of Pass The Parcel. 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 (1977) The National School Lunch Program: Is It Working? 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

Ireland KS (2017) The Role Family Communication Patterns Play in Shaping People’s Responses and Perceived Outcomes to Boundary Turbulence via Privacy Breaches in Their Personal Relationships. 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 (2011) Granderson’s Catches Add to October Lore. New York Times B15

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Aragón 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Aragón 2013; Yadlapalli and Yamashita 2013).

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

Two authors: (Yadlapalli and Yamashita 2013)
Three or more authors: (Ibrahim et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Ecology
Abbreviation	Plant Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1385-0237
ISSN (online)	1573-5052
Scope	Plant Science Ecology