How to format your references using the Plant Physiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Plant Physiology. 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
von Hippel FN (2001) Energy. Plutonium and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Science 293: 2397–2398
A journal article with 2 authors
Cowman AF, Crabb BS (2002) The Plasmodium falciparum genome--a blueprint for erythrocyte invasion. Science 298: 126–128
A journal article with 3 authors
Nowak MA, Tarnita CE, Wilson EO (2010) The evolution of eusociality. Nature 466: 1057–1062
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Piot P, Bartos M, Ghys PD, Walker N, Schwartländer B (2001) The global impact of HIV/AIDS. Nature 410: 968–973

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Weller RB, Hunter HJA, Mann MW (2014) Clinical Dermatology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
Tian X (2013) Scalable Multicasting over Next-Generation Internet: Design, Analysis and Applications. Springer, New York, NY
A chapter in an edited book
Gibson B, Perentesis J, Alonzo TA, Kaspers GJL (2011) Treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. In GH Reaman, FO Smith, eds, Childhood Leukemia: A Practical Handbook. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 121–160

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 Physiology.

Blog post
Hamilton K (2015) This Is What Your Brain Looks Like With Alzheimer’s Disease. IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/brain/animation-what-alzheimers-disease/

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 (2003) Applying Agreed-Upon Procedures: Airport and Airway Trust Fund Excise Taxes. 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
Anderson A (2010) Scribblins. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA

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
Wagner J (2016) Dodgers’ Late-Inning Gamble Backfires in Cubs’ Timely Grand Slam. New York Times SP2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (von Hippel, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (von Hippel, 2001; Cowman and Crabb, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Cowman and Crabb, 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Piot et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titlePlant Physiology
AbbreviationPlant Physiol.
ISSN (print)0032-0889
ISSN (online)1532-2548
ScopePlant Science
Genetics
Physiology

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