How to format your references using the Tropical Plant Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Tropical Plant Biology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Smith O (2001) Biomedicine. Nota bene. In the nic of time. Science 294:2118

A journal article with 2 authors

Devos DP, Reynaud EG (2010) Evolution. Intermediate steps. Science 330:1187–1188

A journal article with 3 authors

Kelley AM, Michalet X, Weiss S (2001) Chemical physics. Single-molecule spectroscopy comes of age. Science 292:1671–1672

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Asher RJ, Meng J, Wible JR, et al (2005) Stem Lagomorpha and the antiquity of Glires. Science 307:1091–1094

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kang S (2012) Micro/Nano Replication. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Marx D, Rossmanith P (eds) (2012) Parameterized and Exact Computation: 6th International Symposium, IPEC 2011, Saarbrücken, Germany, September 6-8, 2011. Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Medeiros LL, Magalhaes LAG, Estrada JJS, et al (2015) Sensitometric analyses of screen-film systems for mammography exams in Brazil. In: Jaffray DA (ed) World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, June 7-12, 2015, Toronto, Canada. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 15–17

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 Tropical Plant Biology.

Blog post

Andrew E (2016) The Amazing Things Poo Can Tell You About An Animal’s Health. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/amazing-things-poo-can-tell-you-about-animal-s-health/. 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 (1991) Space Shuttle: NASA Faces Challenges in Its Attempt to Achieve Planned Flight Rates. 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

Bodenmiller JJ (2015) A quantitative relational analysis of leadership style and leader-accountability in nonprofit organizations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Stellin S (2013) Do You Have a Doctor’s Note? New York Times RE1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smith 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Smith 2001; Devos and Reynaud 2010).

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

Two authors: (Devos and Reynaud 2010)
Three or more authors: (Asher et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Tropical Plant Biology
Abbreviation	Trop. Plant Biol.
ISSN (print)	1935-9756
ISSN (online)	1935-9764
Scope	Plant Science Genetics