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:

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
Kondo S (2014) Developmental biology. Self-organizing somites. Science 343:736–737
A journal article with 2 authors
Koren I, Kimchi A (2012) Cell biology. Promoting tumorigenesis by suppressing autophagy. Science 338:889–890
A journal article with 3 authors
Hoehler TM, Bebout BM, Des Marais DJ (2001) The role of microbial mats in the production of reduced gases on the early Earth. Nature 412:324–327
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Wiens DA, Anandakrishnan S, Winberry JP, King MA (2008) Simultaneous teleseismic and geodetic observations of the stick-slip motion of an Antarctic ice stream. Nature 453:770–774

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Morales G, Kacher C (2015) Short Selling with the O’Neil Disciples. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Bose K (ed) (2015) Proteases in Apoptosis: Pathways, Protocols and Translational Advances, 1st ed. 2015. Springer International Publishing, Cham
A chapter in an edited book
Günay A, Yolum P (2012) Detecting Conflicts in Commitments. In: Sakama C, Sardina S, Vasconcelos W, Winikoff M (eds) Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies IX: 9th International Workshop, DALT 2011, Taipei, Taiwan, May 3, 2011, Revised Selected and Invited Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 51–66

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
Hamilton K (2016) Antimatter Breakthrough Sheds Light On Matter’s Shadowy Twin. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/antimatter-breakthrough-sheds-light-on-matters-shadowy-twin/. 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 (1989) Job Training Partnership Act: Services and Outcomes for Participants With Differing Needs. 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
Kim EH (2010) A personal narrative of a Korean immigrant to the United States: A quest for finding a niche. 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
Poniewozik J (2017) The Elephant in a Ballroom at the Globes. New York Times C1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kondo 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Koren and Kimchi 2012; Kondo 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Koren and Kimchi 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Wiens et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleProtoplasma
AbbreviationProtoplasma
ISSN (print)0033-183X
ISSN (online)1615-6102
ScopePlant Science
Cell Biology
General Medicine

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