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

Goldston, D. (2007) Making room for dissent. Nature 448, 524

A journal article with 2 authors

Ranero, C.R. and Pérez-Gussinyé, M. (2010) Sequential faulting explains the asymmetry and extension discrepancy of conjugate margins. Nature 468, 294–299

A journal article with 3 authors

Prajeesh, A.G. et al. (2013) Falling monsoon depression frequency: a Gray-Sikka conditions perspective. Sci. Rep. 3, 2989

A journal article with 3 or more authors

Schmid, A. et al. (2001) Industrial biocatalysis today and tomorrow. Nature 409, 258–268

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Staudt, G. (2001) Experimentalphysik, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA

An edited book

Merino, C., ed. (2015) Lectures on Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology: Proceedings of the Third IDPASC School, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, January 21 -- February 2, 2013, 161, Springer International Publishing

A chapter in an edited book

Mendoza, M. et al. (2015) Extractive Single-Document Summarization Based on Global-Best Harmony Search and a Greedy Local Optimizer. In Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications: 14th Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2015, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, October 25-31, 2015, Proceedings, Part II (Pichardo Lagunas, O. et al., eds), pp. 52–66, Springer International Publishing

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) How Can ‘Cured’ Ebola Patients Fall Sick Again Months After Recovery?. 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 (1980) Areas Needing Improvement in the Adult Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, 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

Blicha, E.A. (2015) Music therapy program for older adults: A grant proposal. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Rothenberg, B. (2017) In Comeback From Injury, Stephens Falls Short Against Another AmericanNew York Times, B9

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