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

Jacobs M. A career is like a love affair. Science. 2015:348(6230):150.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nash JD and Moum JN. River plumes as a source of large-amplitude internal waves in the coastal ocean. Nature. 2005:437(7057):400–403.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen S, Zhang YE, and Long M. New genes in Drosophila quickly become essential. Science. 2010:330(6011):1682–1685.

A journal article with 13 or more authors

Dorner M, Horwitz JA, Robbins JB, Barry WT, Feng Q, Mu K, Jones CT, Schoggins JW, Catanese MT, Burton DR, et al. A genetically humanized mouse model for hepatitis C virus infection. Nature. 2011:474(7350):208–211.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Black R. Pragmatic Software Testing (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Indianapolis, Indiana).

An edited book

Eliades T and Eliades G eds. Plastics in Dentistry and Estrogenicity: A Guide to Safe Practice (Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg).

A chapter in an edited book

Manseau J and Keown M. Development of an Assessment Methodology for Lower Leg Injuries Resulting from Anti-Vehicular Blast Landmines. . In. IUTAM Symposium on Impact Biomechanics: From Fundamental Insights to Applications, MD Gilchrist, ed, Solid Mechanics and Its Applications. (Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht), pp. 33–40.

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

Davis J. Scientists Plan On Resurrecting A 30,000-Year-Old Giant Virus. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientist-plan-resurrecting-30000-year-old-virus/. 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. Technology Transfer: Administration of the Bayh-Dole Act by Research Universities (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

Burns D. Measuring the Outcome of At-Risk Students on Biology Standardized Tests When Using Different Instructional Strategies. 2017.

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

Sisario B. Future Hits No. 1 on Billboard Chart. New York Times. 2017:C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Jacobs 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Nash and Moum 2005; Jacobs 2015).

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

Two authors: (Nash and Moum 2005)
Three or more authors: (Dorner et al. 2011)

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