How to format your references using the Seed Science Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Seed Science 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.
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
Klironomos, J. N. (2002) Feedback with soil biota contributes to plant rarity and invasiveness in communities. Nature 417, 67–70.
A journal article with 2 authors
Holland, M. D. and Hastings, A. (2008) Strong effect of dispersal network structure on ecological dynamics. Nature 456, 792–794.
A journal article with 3 authors
Isakov, S. V., Melko, R. G. and Hastings, M. B. (2012) Universal signatures of fractionalized quantum critical points. Science (New York, N.Y.) 335, 193–195.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Cao, C.-Y., Shen, Y.-Y., Wang, J.-D., Li, L. and Liang, G.-L. (2013) Controlled intracellular self-assembly of gadolinium nanoparticles as smart molecular MR contrast agents. Scientific reports 3, 1024.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Epstein, M. (2012) The Elements of Continuum Biomechanics. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Sánchez-Silva, M. (2016) Reliability and Life-Cycle Analysis of Deteriorating Systems. Klutke, G.-A. (Ed.) Cham, Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Blake, J. J., Smith, D. M., Marchbanks, M. P., Seibert, A. L., Wood, S. M. and Kim, E. S. (2016) Does Student–Teacher Racial/Ethnic Match Impact Black Students’ Discipline Risk? A Test of the Cultural Synchrony Hypothesis, pp. 79–98 in Skiba, R. J., Mediratta, K., and Rausch, M. K. (Eds.) Inequality in School Discipline: Research and Practice to Reduce Disparities. New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan US.

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 Seed Science Research.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2014) IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/only-half-all-spiders-have-been-discovered/ (accessed 30 October 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) Utilization at Aberdeen Proving Ground’s ADP Installation. LCD-76-125. Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Kim, H. (2008) Prediction and Elimination of Galling in Forming Galvanized Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS).

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
Crow, K. (2003) To the Barricades Over a Police Barricade.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Klironomos, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Klironomos, 2002; Holland and Hastings, 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Holland and Hastings, 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Cao et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleSeed Science Research
AbbreviationSeed Sci. Res.
ISSN (print)0960-2585
ISSN (online)1475-2735
ScopePlant Science

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