How to format your references using the Plant Growth Regulation citation style

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

Schapira M (2015) STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY. Chromatin complex, crystal clear. Science 350:278–279

A journal article with 2 authors

Yang X, Lu X (2014) Drastic change in China’s lakes and reservoirs over the past decades. Sci Rep 4:6041

A journal article with 3 authors

Wellman CH, Osterloff PL, Mohiuddin U (2003) Fragments of the earliest land plants. Nature 425:282–285

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mueller M, Grauschopf U, Maier T, et al (2009) The structure of a cytolytic alpha-helical toxin pore reveals its assembly mechanism. Nature 459:726–730

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Benatar D (2012) The Second Sexism. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Agassi J (2016) Beg to Differ: The Logic of Disputes and Argumentation. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Smith L (2016) Evidence-Oriented Practice. In: Smith L (ed) Clinical Practice at the Edge of Care: Developments in Working with At-Risk Children and their Families. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 49–78

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 Growth Regulation.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2016) From Perspiration To World Domination – The Extraordinary Science Of Sweat. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/from-perspiration-to-world-domination-the-extraordinary-science-of-sweat/. 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 (1993) Developing and Using Questionnaires. 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

Bontrager JG (2015) Characterization and Applications for A Polymerized DiaCEST Contrast Agent. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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

Hollander S (2002) Friends and Family Run for 9/11 Victims. New York Times D6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schapira 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Yang and Lu 2014; Schapira 2015).

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

Two authors: (Yang and Lu 2014)
Three or more authors: (Mueller et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Growth Regulation
Abbreviation	Plant Growth Regul.
ISSN (print)	0167-6903
ISSN (online)	1573-5087
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Physiology