How to format your references using the Potato Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Potato Research. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Moore A (2008) Science teaching must evolve. Nature 453:31–32
A journal article with 2 authors
Lee SK, Ahn CW (2014) Probing of 2 dimensional confinement-induced structural transitions in amorphous oxide thin film. Sci Rep 4:4200
A journal article with 3 authors
Quoidbach J, Gilbert DT, Wilson TD (2013) The end of history illusion. Science 339:96–98
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Liu C-F, Fan H, Gou S-C, Liu W-M (2014) Crystallized and amorphous vortices in rotating atomic-molecular Bose-Einstein condensates. Sci Rep 4:4224

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Brenner IR (2010) How to Survive a Medical Malpractice Lawsuit. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex, UK
An edited book
Emmi L (ed) (2014) Behçet’s Syndrome: From Pathogenesis to Treatment. Springer, Milano
A chapter in an edited book
Sahayaraj K, Balasubramanian R (2016) Gut Autochthonous Microbes and Their Enzyme Profile. In: Balasubramanian R (ed) Artificial Rearing of Reduviid Predators for Pest Management. Springer, Singapore, pp 85–102

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 Potato Research.

Blog post
Davis J (2016) Ambitious Project To Map Every Single Cell In The Human Body Launched. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/ambitious-project-to-map-every-single-cell-in-the-human-body-launched/. 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 (1976) International Cooperation in Energy Research and Development. 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
Roberson BN (2013) Motivation towards learning perceived in Socratic seminar versus traditional lecture. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine 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
Schwartz J (2016) Exxon’s Forecasts, Not Past Views, Are at Core of Climate Investigation. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Moore 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Moore 2008; Lee and Ahn 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Lee and Ahn 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Liu et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titlePotato Research
AbbreviationPotato Res.
ISSN (print)0014-3065
ISSN (online)1871-4528
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Food Science

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