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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Kagan JC (2013) Immunology. Sensing endotoxins from within. Science 341:1184–1185
A journal article with 2 authors
Baldwin AJ, Kay LE (2012) Structural biology: Dynamic binding. Nature 488:165–166
A journal article with 3 authors
Tingley MW, Estes LD, Wilcove DS (2013) Ecosystems: climate change must not blow conservation off course. Nature 500:271–272
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Montoya JP, Holl CM, Zehr JP, et al (2004) High rates of N2 fixation by unicellular diazotrophs in the oligotrophic Pacific Ocean. Nature 430:1027–1032

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Cooney N (2015) How to Be Great at Doing Good. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Gourtsoyiannis NC (ed) (2011) Clinical MRI of the Abdomen: Why,How,When. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Murthy DNP, Jack N (2014) EWs/MSCs: An Overview. In: Jack N (ed) Extended Warranties, Maintenance Service and Lease Contracts: Modeling and Analysis for Decision-Making. Springer, London, pp 91–125

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
Luntz S (2015) Australians Invited To Save The Wombats. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/australians-invited-save-wombats/. 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 (1984) OMB Needs To More Fully Consider Government-Wide Implications in Its Telecommunications Initiatives. 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
Medlej M (2017) Assessing the Probability of Prototyping Success in Systems Acquisitions (APOPS). Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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
Qiu L (2017) Trump Tale of Pershing Killing Muslim Captives ‘Has No Basis in Truth.’ New York Times A16

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kagan 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Baldwin and Kay 2012; Kagan 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Baldwin and Kay 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Montoya et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titlePlant Growth Regulation
AbbreviationPlant Growth Regul.
ISSN (print)0167-6903
ISSN (online)1573-5087
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Plant Science
Physiology

Other styles