How to format your references using the Trends in Plant Science citation style

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

Sharma, P. (2005) Physics. How to create a spin current. Science 307, 531–533

A journal article with 2 authors

Tigaret, C. and Choquet, D. (2009) Neuroscience. More AMPAR garnish. Science 323, 1295–1296

A journal article with 3 authors

Pavlidis, I. et al. (2002) Seeing through the face of deception. Nature 415, 35

A journal article with 3 or more authors

Chen, X. et al. (2005) Tissue-specific TAFs counteract Polycomb to turn on terminal differentiation. Science 310, 869–872

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bachmutsky, A. (2010) System Design for Telecommunication Gateways, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

An edited book

Hunt, K.K. et al., eds. (2008) Breast Cancer 2nd edition, Springer

A chapter in an edited book

Escalera, S. et al. (2011) Traffic Sign Categorization. In Traffic-Sign Recognition Systems (Baró, X. et al., eds), pp. 53–80, Springer

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 Trends in Plant Science.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015) Japanese Whisky Sent Into Space For Aging Aboard The International Space Station. IFLScience. [Online]. [Accessed: 30-Oct-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 (1982) Education Authority To Charge Student Financial Aid Application Fees, 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

Nikolova, S. (2010) Health insurance transitions of SCHIP-eligible children in response to higher public premiums. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina

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

Crow, K. (2000) With Young Rhythm in His Bones, A Drummers’ Drummer Turns 80New York Times, 146

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Trends in Plant Science
Abbreviation	Trends Plant Sci.
ISSN (print)	1360-1385
ISSN (online)	1878-4372
Scope	Plant Science