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

Palmer T (2015) Modelling: Build imprecise supercomputers. Nature 526:32–33

A journal article with 2 authors

Monroe C, Kim J (2013) Scaling the ion trap quantum processor. Science 339:1164–1169

A journal article with 3 authors

Christensen UR, Holzwarth V, Reiners A (2009) Energy flux determines magnetic field strength of planets and stars. Nature 457:167–169

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Myllykallio H, Lipowski G, Leduc D, Filee J, Forterre P, Liebl U (2002) An alternative flavin-dependent mechanism for thymidylate synthesis. Science 297:105–107

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cherrie JW, Howie RM, Semple S (2010) Monitoring for Health Hazards at Work. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Hancock ER, Wilson RC, Windeatt T, Ulusoy I, Escolano F (eds) (2010) Structural, Syntactic, and Statistical Pattern Recognition: Joint IAPR International Workshop, SSPR&SPR 2010, Cesme, Izmir, Turkey, August 18-20, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Miyashita H (2016) A Tale of Two Privacies: Enforcing Privacy with Hard Power and Soft Power in Japan. In: Wright D, De Hert P (eds) Enforcing Privacy: Regulatory, Legal and Technological Approaches. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 105–122

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

Hamilton K (2016) What Magic Mushrooms Do To Your Body And Brain. 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 (2013) Interstate Compacts: Transparency and Oversight of Bi-State Tolling Authorities Could Be Enhanced. 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

Rahimi RM (2014) Investigation of Porosity Evolution and Orthotropic Axes on Anisotropic Materials. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois 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

Billard M (2010) Step Down to Step Up. New York Times E5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Palmer 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Monroe and Kim 2013; Palmer 2015).

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

Two authors: (Monroe and Kim 2013)
Three or more authors: (Myllykallio 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