How to format your references using the The Plant Cell citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Plant Cell. 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

Barinaga M. SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY: Satisfaction Sans Status. Science. 2000:289(5487):2025.

A journal article with 2 authors

Berndt A and Deisseroth K. OPTOGENETICS. Expanding the optogenetics toolkit. Science. 2015:349(6248):590–591.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jansens A, van Duijn E, and Braakman I. Coordinated nonvectorial folding in a newly synthesized multidomain protein. Science. 2002:298(5602):2401–2403.

A journal article with 13 or more authors

Forbes AA, Powell THQ, Stelinski LL, Smith JJ, and Feder JL. Sequential sympatric speciation across trophic levels. Science. 2009:323(5915):776–779.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bass F. Guide to the Census (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ).

An edited book

Gavalec M. Decision Making and Optimization: Special Matrices and Their Applications in Economics and Management J Ramík and K Zimmermann, eds (Springer International Publishing: Cham).

A chapter in an edited book

Daughenbaugh LR and Shaw EL. Judith Butler. . In. A Critical Pedagogy of Resistance: 34 Pedagogues We Need to Know, JD Kirylo, ed, Transgressions. (SensePublishers: Rotterdam), pp. 17–20.

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 The Plant Cell.

Blog post

Luntz S. Supermassive Black Hole Is Thirty Times Larger Than It Should Be. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/black-hole-thirty-times-too-large/. Retrieved October 30, 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. Digital Television Transition: GAO DTV Broadcaster Survey (GAO-08-528SP, April 2008), an E-supplement to GAO-08-510 (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

Bergh PA. Reconfiguring academic priorities: Through the eyes of Michigan community college Chief Academic Officers. 2009.

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

Corkery M. Hudson’s Bay, Saks Owner, Loses C.E.O. At Busy Time. New York Times. 2017:B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Barinaga 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Barinaga 2000; Berndt and Deisseroth 2015).

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

Two authors: (Berndt and Deisseroth 2015)
Three or more authors: (Forbes et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Plant Cell
Abbreviation	Plant Cell
ISSN (print)	1040-4651
ISSN (online)	1531-298X
Scope	Plant Science Cell Biology