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

Chang, J. (2015) Core services: Reward bioinformaticians. Nature, 520, 151–152.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bork, P. and Copley, R. (2001) Genome speak. Nature, 409, 815.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jacobs, S.S., Giulivi, C.F. and Mele, P.A. (2002) Freshening of the Ross Sea during the late 20th century. Science, 297, 386–389.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Huan, J., Wan, K., Liu, Y., Dong, W. and Wang, G. (2013) Removing PCR for the elimination of undesired DNA fragments cycle by cycle. Sci. Rep., 3, 2303.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Perrin, V. (2013) MRI Techniques, Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bebis, G., Boyle, R., Parvin, B., et al. eds. (2015) Advances in Visual Computing: 11th International Symposium, ISVC 2015, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 14-16, 2015, Proceedings, Part I 1st ed. 2015., Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Gronau, H.-D., Langmann, H.-H. and Schleicher, D. (2011) Programme. In H.-D. Gronau, H.-H. Langmann, and D. Schleicher, eds. 50th IMO - 50 Years of International Mathematical Olympiads. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 27–45.

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) Restricting Gay Men From Donating Blood Is Discriminatory. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/restricting-gay-men-from-donating-blood-is-discriminatory/ [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 (1989) ADP Budget: SSA’s Fiscal Year 1990 Information Technology Systems Budget Request, 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

Desai, S.S. (2013) CFD simuation of flow past a rotating circular cylinder with an end plate. 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

David Goodman, J. and Baker, A.L. (2015) 2 Communities Unite in Grief for an ‘Unassuming Hero.’ New York Times, A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chang, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Chang, 2015; Bork and Copley, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Bork and Copley, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Huan et al., 2013)

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