How to format your references using the Plant Gene citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Plant Gene. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Goodman, S., 2001. Battle to save beleaguered beluga. Nature 412, 108.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pelkmans, L., Zerial, M., 2005. Kinase-regulated quantal assemblies and kiss-and-run recycling of caveolae. Nature 436, 128–133.

A journal article with 3 authors

Walker, J., Cliff, R.A., Latham, A.G., 2006. U-Pb isotopic age of the StW 573 hominid from Sterkfontein, South Africa. Science 314, 1592–1594.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Burch, J.L., Goldstein, J., Lewis, W.S., Young, D.T., Coates, A.J., Dougherty, M.K., André, N., 2007. Tethys and Dione as sources of outward-flowing plasma in Saturn’s magnetosphere. Nature 447, 833–835.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geotechni, Laackmann, K., Balthaus, H., Braach, O., Friebel, W.-D., Hettler, A., Maidl, B., Meissner, M., Schuck, W., Schwaiger, S., Stephan, D., Thewes, M., Wittke-Schmitt, B., 2015. Taschenbuch für den Tunnelbau 2015. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Feng, L., 2013. The Chinese Oil Industry: History and Future, SpringerBriefs in Energy. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Chatain, T., Haar, S., 2014. A Canonical Contraction for Safe Petri Nets, in: Koutny, M., Haddad, S., Yakovlev, A. (Eds.), Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency IX, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 83–98.

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 Gene.

Blog post

Fang, J., 2014. Mysterious Object Spotted On Saturn’s Moon [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/cassini-captures-mystery-feature-evolving-titans-sea/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1992. Depository Institutions: Contracting Practices With Data Processing Servicers (No. GGD-92-19). 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

Iniguez, A., 2013. The Latino immigrant families and involvement with child welfare system: A grant proposal (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Feeney, K., 2010. In Search of Flavors That Go Beyond The Deli Counter. New York Times NJ11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goodman, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Goodman, 2001; Pelkmans and Zerial, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Pelkmans and Zerial, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Burch et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Gene
Abbreviation	Plant Gene
ISSN (print)	2352-4073
Scope