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

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

Chi, K.R. (2009) Microscopy: Ever-increasing resolution. Nature, 462, 675–678.

A journal article with 2 authors

West, J.D. and Bergstrom, C.T. (2011) Psychology. Can ignorance promote democracy? Science, 334, 1503–1504.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hayward, R.C., Saville, D.A. and Aksay, I.A. (2000) Electrophoretic assembly of colloidal crystals with optically tunable micropatterns. Nature, 404, 56–59.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Vigneron, N., Stroobant, V., Chapiro, J., Ooms, A., Degiovanni, G., Morel, S., Bruggen, P. van der, Boon, T. and Van den Eynde, B.J. (2004) An antigenic peptide produced by peptide splicing in the proteasome. Science, 304, 587–590.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schwarz, D.R. (2014) Reading the European Novel to 1900, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Makeham, J. ed. (2010) Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Larsen, T., Smith, B.A. and Rosenbloom, B. (2015) Culture and Communication in International Marketing Channels. In A. K. Manrai and H. L. Meadow, eds. Global Perspectives in Marketing for the 21st Century: Proceedings of the 1999 World Marketing Congress. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 13–14.

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 Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016) Land Carbon Storage Swelled In The Little Ice Age, Which Bodes Ill For The Future. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/land-carbon-storage-swelled-in-the-little-ice-age-which-bodes-ill-for-the-future/ [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 (1978) Reporting of Federal Funds for Research and Development, 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

Ravilla, S. (2013) Correlation between diabetes and periodontitis. Doctoral dissertation. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

(nyt), S.K. (2001) World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Space Tourist Is Rejected. New York Times, A6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chi, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Chi, 2009; West and Bergstrom, 2011).

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

Two authors: (West and Bergstrom, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Vigneron et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Plant Journal
Abbreviation	Plant J.
ISSN (print)	0960-7412
ISSN (online)	1365-313X
Scope	Plant Science Cell Biology Genetics