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
Tsapatsis M (2011) Materials science. Toward high-throughput zeolite membranes. Science 334:767–768
A journal article with 2 authors
Wang R, Yan X (2014) Superior asymmetric supercapacitor based on Ni-Co oxide nanosheets and carbon nanorods. Sci Rep 4:3712
A journal article with 3 authors
Laliberté E, Zemunik G, Turner BL (2014) Environmental filtering explains variation in plant diversity along resource gradients. Science 345:1602–1605
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Thompson PM, Giedd JN, Woods RP, et al (2000) Growth patterns in the developing brain detected by using continuum mechanical tensor maps. Nature 404:190–193

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Chen ZN, Chia MYW (2006) Broadband Planar Antennas. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
Truong LD (2009) Frozen Section Library: Genitourinary Tract. Springer, New York, NY
A chapter in an edited book
Kurtis M, Logishetty K, Martinez-Martin P (2011) An in-Depth Look at the Non Motor Symptom Scale. In: Martinez-Martin P, Odin P, Antonini A (eds) Handbook of Non-Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease. Springer Healthcare UK, Heidelberg, pp 37–43

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) The US Needs To Improve Its Science Literacy, Says Astronaut Mae Jemison. 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 (1974) Charges Made by the National Federation of the Blind Against the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped. 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
Holmberg MB (2014) Alternative nitrogen for subsequent southern switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) production using cool-season legumes. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State 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
Castle S (2017) As Clock Ticks on Exit From E.U., Britain Seems Adrift. New York Times A6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tsapatsis 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Tsapatsis 2011; Wang and Yan 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Wang and Yan 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Thompson et al. 2000)

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