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

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

Gitler, A.D. (2011). Neuroscience. Another reason to exercise. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334, 606–607

A journal article with 2 authors

Duret, L., & Galtier, N. (2009). Comment on “Human-specific gain of function in a developmental enhancer”. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323, 714; author reply 714

A journal article with 3 authors

Norell, M.A., Makovicky, P.J., & Currie, P.J. (2001). Palaeontology. The beaks of ostrich dinosaurs. Nature, 412, 873–874

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kim, S., Malinverni, J.C., Sliz, P., Silhavy, T.J., Harrison, S.C., & Kahne, D. (2007). Structure and function of an essential component of the outer membrane protein assembly machine. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317, 961–964

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McCall, M.W. (2010). Classical Mechanics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Ślęzak, D., Kim, T.-H., Yau, S.S., Gervasi, O., & Kang, B.-H. eds. (2009). Grid and Distributed Computing: International Conference, GDC 2009, Held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conferences, FGIT 2009, Jeju Island, Korea, December 10-12, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Lappin, G. (2011). Microdosing: Pharmacokinetic and Metabolism Data Early in the Drug Development Process. In P.L. Bonate & D.R. Howard (Eds.), Pharmacokinetics in Drug Development: Advances and Applications, Volume 3 (pp. 115–130). Springer US, Boston, MA.

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 Genome.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). When Did Humans Start To See The Color Blue? https://www.iflscience.com/brain/when-did-humans-start-see-color-blue/ (accessed 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. (1987). Bilingual Education: Research and Evaluation Contracts. 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

Thom, R.C. (2017). Digital Martyrs and Shadowless Assailants: The Projective Shadow’s Emergence in Cyberspace [Doctoral dissertation]. Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, 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

Kishkovsky, S. (2003). BP’s Deal With TNK Is Approved By Russia. New York Times, W1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gitler, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Duret & Galtier, 2009; Gitler, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Duret & Galtier, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Kim et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Plant Genome
Abbreviation	Plant Genome
ISSN (online)	1940-3372
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science Genetics