How to format your references using the Plant Molecular Biology citation style

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

Zerhouni EA (2006) Research funding. NIH in the post-doubling era: realities and strategies. Science 314:1088–1090

A journal article with 2 authors

Galitski V, Spielman IB (2013) Spin-orbit coupling in quantum gases. Nature 494:49–54

A journal article with 3 authors

Beldade P, Brakefield PM, Long AD (2002) Contribution of Distal-less to quantitative variation in butterfly eyespots. Nature 415:315–318

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhong H, Molday LL, Molday RS, Yau K-W (2002) The heteromeric cyclic nucleotide-gated channel adopts a 3A:1B stoichiometry. Nature 420:193–198

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Khan MM, Islam MR (2016) Zero Waste Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Benedicks M, Jones PW, Smirnov S, Winckler B (eds) (2005) Perspectives in Analysis: Essays in Honor of Lennart Carleson’s 75th Birthday. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Hundt R (2013) From Carbon to Clean—How to Attract Investment in Smart Grid Infrastructures. In: Noam EM, Pupillo LM, Kranz JJ (eds) Broadband Networks, Smart Grids and Climate Change. Springer, New York, NY, pp 39–45

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 Molecular Biology.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Happy Endings: The Ins And Outs Of Clinical Sexology. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/happy-endings-ins-and-outs-clinical-sexology/. 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 (1995) Federal Aviation Administration: Issues Related to FAA Reform. 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

Wolfe CJ (2012) Dimensions of Purchasing Social Responsibility in Sustainable Supply Chain Organizations. Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral 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

Markoff J (2016) Another Sign of Trouble in Google’s Self-Driving Car Unit: Its Top Roboticist Is Leaving. New York Times B7

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zerhouni 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Zerhouni 2006; Galitski and Spielman 2013).

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

Two authors: (Galitski and Spielman 2013)
Three or more authors: (Zhong et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Molecular Biology
Abbreviation	Plant Mol. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0167-4412
ISSN (online)	1573-5028
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Genetics General Medicine