How to format your references using the Protoplasma citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Protoplasma. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Weiss RA (2001) Gulliver’s travels in HIVland. Nature 410:963–967

A journal article with 2 authors

Meldrum DR, Holl MR (2002) Tech.Sight. Microfluidics. Microscale bioanalytical systems. Science 297:1197–1198

A journal article with 3 authors

Dian BC, Longarte A, Zwier TS (2002) Conformational dynamics in a dipeptide after single-mode vibrational excitation. Science 296:2369–2373

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Richardson AD, Hufkens K, Milliman T, et al (2018) Ecosystem warming extends vegetation activity but heightens vulnerability to cold temperatures. Nature 560:368–371

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bitton G (2014) Microbiology of Drinking Water. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Piętka E, Kawa J, Wieclawek W (eds) (2014) Information Technologies in Biomedicine, Volume 3. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Smits J (2014) The Law of Contract. In: Hage J, Akkermans B (eds) Introduction to Law. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 51–70

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 Protoplasma.

Blog post

Hale T (2017) Hundreds Of Cats Are Quarantined Following Bird Flu Outbreak In NYC. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/hundreds-of-cats-are-quarantined-following-bird-flu-outbreak-in-nyc-/. 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 (2007) Surface Transportation: Strategies Are Available for Making Existing Road Infrastructure Perform Better. 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

Coar H (2010) Using mandalas to support grieving female adolescents: A case study. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Murphy MJO (2010) The Accidental Mom. New York Times BR23

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Weiss 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Weiss 2001; Meldrum and Holl 2002).

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

Two authors: (Meldrum and Holl 2002)
Three or more authors: (Richardson et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Protoplasma
Abbreviation	Protoplasma
ISSN (print)	0033-183X
ISSN (online)	1615-6102
Scope	Plant Science Cell Biology General Medicine