How to format your references using the South African Journal of Botany citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Journal of Botany. 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

Gaston, K.J., 2010. Ecology. Valuing common species. Science 327, 154–155.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gerst, A., Savage, M.K., 2004. Seismic anisotropy beneath Ruapehu volcano: a possible eruption forecasting tool. Science 306, 1543–1547.

A journal article with 3 authors

Vendrasco, M.J., Wood, T.E., Runnegar, B.N., 2004. Articulated Palaeozoic fossil with 17 plates greatly expands disparity of early chitons. Nature 429, 288–291.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ideta, A., Aoyagi, Y., Tsuchiya, K., Kamijima, T., Nishimiya, Y., Tsuda, S., 2013. A simple medium enables bovine embryos to be held for seven days at 4°C. Sci. Rep. 3, 1173.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Natsuno, T., 2005. i-Mode Strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Paschmann, G., Schwartz, S.J., Escoubet, C.P., Haaland, S. (Eds.), 2005. Outer Magnetospheric Boundaries: Cluster Results, Space Sciences Series of ISSI. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Masoni, M., Guelfi, M.R., Shtylla, J., 2011. Computer mediated communication, in: Guelfi, Maria Renza, Masoni, Marco, Conti, A., Gensini, G.F. (Eds.), E-Learning in Sanità: Progettare, Produrre Ed Erogare Corsi Di Formazione Online per l’area Sanitaria. Springer, Milano, pp. 17–22.

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 South African Journal of Botany.

Blog post

Carpineti, A., 2016. Boron Discovered On Mars For The First Time [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1983. GAO ADP Data Lines: Issue No. 1 (No. 122631). 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

Gamez, T.E., 2012. Preventing child maltreatment among children with non-resident fathers: A grant proposal (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Saslow, L., 2007. LIPA Kills Wind Farm Off Jones Beach. New York Times LI2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gaston, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Gaston, 2010; Gerst and Savage, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Gerst and Savage, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Ideta et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	South African Journal of Botany
Abbreviation	S. Afr. J. Bot.
ISSN (print)	0254-6299
Scope	Plant Science