How to format your references using the Weed Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Weed 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	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

Erwin D (2009) A call to the custodians of deep time. Nature 462:282–283

A journal article with 2 authors

Yang Y, Lisberger SG (2014) Purkinje-cell plasticity and cerebellar motor learning are graded by complex-spike duration. Nature 510:529–532

A journal article with 3 authors

Schott D, Yanai I, Hunter CP (2014) Natural RNA interference directs a heritable response to the environment. Sci Rep 4:7387

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhai RG, Zhang F, Hiesinger PR, Cao Y, Haueter CM, Bellen HJ (2008) NAD synthase NMNAT acts as a chaperone to protect against neurodegeneration. Nature 452:887–891

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fuller S (2005) RapidIO®: The Embedded System Interconnect. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

An edited book

Teebi AS, ed. (2010) Genetic Disorders Among Arab Populations. 2nd ed. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. XVII, 772 p p

A chapter in an edited book

Afzal N, Mitkov R, Farzindar A (2011) Unsupervised Relation Extraction Using Dependency Trees for Automatic Generation of Multiple-Choice Questions. Pages 32–43 in C Butz, P Lingras, eds. Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 24th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Canadian AI 2011, St. John’s, Canada, May 25-27, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Weed Science.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) How To Memorise An Entire Foreign Dictionary (And Become A Scrabble World Champion). IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/how-memorise-entire-foreign-dictionary-and-become-scrabble-world-champion/. 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 (2006) Space Acquisitions: DOD Needs Additional Knowledge as it Embarks on a New Approach for Transformational Satellite Communications System. GAO-06-537. 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

Shakya M (2017) Planter Boxes and Rain Gardens for Urban Stormwater Management: Performance of Extended Field Application. Doctoral dissertation. Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University

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

de la MERCED MJ (2017) Elliott Hedge Fund Tries to Beat Buffett’s Offer for Utility Operator. New York Times:B3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Erwin 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Erwin 2009; Yang and Lisberger 2014).

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

Two authors: (Yang and Lisberger 2014)
Three or more authors: (Zhai et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Weed Science
Abbreviation	Weed Sci.
ISSN (print)	0043-1745
ISSN (online)	1550-2759
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Plant Science