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
Attaran A (2004) Where did it all go wrong? Nature 430: 932–933
A journal article with 2 authors
Paszek M, Weaver V (2010) Biophysics. Enforcing order on signaling. Science 327: 1335–1336
A journal article with 3 authors
Cannistraci CV, Alanis-Lobato G, Ravasi T (2013) From link-prediction in brain connectomes and protein interactomes to the local-community-paradigm in complex networks. Sci Rep 3: 1613
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Zimmermann K, Leffler A, Babes A, Cendan CM, Carr RW, Kobayashi J-I, Nau C, Wood JN, Reeh PW (2007) Sensory neuron sodium channel Nav1.8 is essential for pain at low temperatures. Nature 447: 855–858

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Brown R (2005) Rational Choice and Judgment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Nadaf A (2016) Scented rice (Oryza sativa L.) Cultivars of India: A Perspective on Quality and Diversity, 1st ed. 2016. Springer India, New Delhi
A chapter in an edited book
Warde D (2009) Anaesthesia and Analgesia. In P Puri, M Höllwarth, eds, Pediatric Surgery. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 39–51

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
Davis J (2016) Trees Can Sense When They Are Being Eaten By Deer And Launch A Defense. IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/trees-can-sense-when-they-are-being-eaten-by-deer-and-launch-a-defense/

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 (1999) Federal Research: Evaluation of Small Business Innovation Research Can Be Strengthened. 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
Chellamuthu VK (2015) Structured Population Models: Numerical Methods and Application to Frogs Infected with Chytridiomycosis. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA

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
Greenhouse L (2007) Court Hears Whether a Drug Statement Is Protected Free Speech for Students. 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 (Attaran, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Attaran, 2004; Paszek and Weaver, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Paszek and Weaver, 2010)
  • Three or more authors: (Zimmermann et al., 2007)

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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