How to format your references using the Plant Science citation style

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

[1]

I. Foster, Service-oriented science, Science 308 (2005) 814–817.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S.D. Brittain, T.W. Rettig, CO and H(3)(+) in the protoplanetary disk around the star HD141569, Nature 418 (2002) 57–59.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M.J. Rust, S.S. Golden, E.K. O’Shea, Light-driven changes in energy metabolism directly entrain the cyanobacterial circadian oscillator, Science 331 (2011) 220–223.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Alper, J. Moxley, E. Nevoigt, G.R. Fink, G. Stephanopoulos, Engineering yeast transcription machinery for improved ethanol tolerance and production, Science 314 (2006) 1565–1568.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

B.J. Preber, Financial Expert Witness Communication, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

A. Schippers, F. Glombitza, W. Sand, eds., Geobiotechnology I: Metal-related Issues, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

F.E. Muller-Karger, C. Hu, S. Andréfouët, R. Varela, R. Thunell, The Color of the Coastal Ocean and Applications in the Solution of Research and Management Problems, in: R.L. Miller, C.E. Del Castillo, B.A. Mckee (Eds.), Remote Sensing of Coastal Aquatic Environments: Technologies, Techniques and Applications, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2005: pp. 101–127.

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 Science.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, Mars May Have Had A Ridiculous Amount Of Water, IFLScience (2017).

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Department of Education: Improved Oversight and Controls Could Help Education Better Respond to Evolving Priorities, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2011.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C. Mueller, A Multidimensional Perspective of Faculty Mentoring and Job Satisfaction during the First Year of Teaching at Lindenwood University, Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2012.

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

[1]

J. Koblin, M.M. Grynbaum, Kelly May Get Morning Slot, Shaking Up ‘Today,’ New York Times (2017) B4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Plant Science
Abbreviation	Plant Sci.
ISSN (print)	0168-9452
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Genetics General Medicine