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

Smaglik P (2003) Capturing competencies. Nature 421:871

A journal article with 2 authors

Farquhar GD, Roderick ML (2003) Atmospheric science. Pinatubo, diffuse light, and the carbon cycle. Science 299:1997–1998

A journal article with 3 authors

McGraw CM, Samaco RC, Zoghbi HY (2011) Adult neural function requires MeCP2. Science 333:186

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Juillerat A, Bertonati C, Dubois G, Guyot V, Thomas S, Valton J, Beurdeley M, Silva GH, Daboussi F, Duchateau P (2014) BurrH: a new modular DNA binding protein for genome engineering. Sci Rep 4:3831

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Illian J, Penttinen A, Stoyan H, Stoyan D (2008) Statistical Analysis and Modelling of Spatial Point Patterns. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Ermentrout GB (2010) Mathematical Foundations of Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Ramtal D, Dobre A (2011) The Laws Governing Motion. In: Dobre A (ed) The Essential Guide to Physics for Flash Games, Animation, and Simulations. Apress, Berkeley, CA, pp 135–156

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 D (2016) If We Find ET, Don’t Talk To It, Says The Man Who Wants To Find ET. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/if-we-find-et-dont-talk-to-it-says-the-man-who-wants-to-find-et/. 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) USDA: Information on Classical Plant and Animal Breeding Activities. 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

Dasari RA (2016) Automatic driving system by recognizing road signs using digital image processing. 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

Rosenberg E (2016) Denise Matthews, 57, Singer Known as Vanity. New York Times B16

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik 2003; Farquhar and Roderick 2003).

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

Two authors: (Farquhar and Roderick 2003)
Three or more authors: (Juillerat et al. 2014)

About the journal

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