How to format your references using the American Journal of Agricultural Economics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Marris, E. 2005. “First glimpse.” Nature 438(7071):1064–1067.

A journal article with 2 authors

Strain, A.J., and J.M. Neuberger. 2002. “A bioartificial liver--state of the art.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 295(5557):1005–1009.

A journal article with 3 authors

Barbot, S., N. Lapusta, and J.-P. Avouac. 2012. “Under the hood of the earthquake machine: toward predictive modeling of the seismic cycle.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 336(6082):707–710.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ulloa Ulloa, C., P. Acevedo-Rodríguez, S. Beck, M.J. Belgrano, R. Bernal, P.E. Berry, L. Brako, M. Celis, G. Davidse, R.C. Forzza, S.R. Gradstein, O. Hokche, B. León, S. León-Yánez, R.E. Magill, D.A. Neill, M. Nee, P.H. Raven, H. Stimmel, M.T. Strong, J.L. Villaseñor, J.L. Zarucchi, F.O. Zuloaga, and P.M. Jørgensen. 2017. “An integrated assessment of the vascular plant species of the Americas.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 358(6370):1614–1617.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bottjer, D.J. 2016. Paleoecology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Weickert, J., M. Hein, and B. Schiele eds. 2013. Pattern Recognition: 35th German Conference, GCPR 2013, Saarbrücken, Germany, September 3-6, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Johnson, L.L., T. Bass, and M. Hicks. 2014. “Creating Critical Spaces for Youth Activists.” In P. Paugh, T. Kress, and R. Lake, eds. Teaching towards Democracy with Postmodern and Popular Culture Texts. Rotterdam: SensePublishers, pp. 37–58.

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 American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Blog post

Hale, T. 2015. “‘Thirsty’ Concrete Can Drain 4,000 liters Of Water In Just One Minute.” IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/thirsty-concrete-can-drain-over-800-gallons-one-minute/ [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. 1978. “Civil Service Commission Should Correct Weaknesses in Its Automatic Data Processing Policies and Practices.” No. FPCD-78-94, 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

Mustico, J.P. 2010. Perception and preference comparison of managers’ behaviors on sales and non -sales employees: A case study. Doctoral dissertation. Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Vecsey, G. 2012. “From Good Times at the Garden to a New Era at the Armory.” New York Times:B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marris 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Marris 2005; Strain and Neuberger 2002).

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

Two authors: (Strain and Neuberger 2002)
Three authors: (Barbot et al. 2012)
4 or more authors: (Ulloa Ulloa et al. 2017)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Abbreviation	Am. J. Agric. Econ.
ISSN (print)	0002-9092
ISSN (online)	1467-8276
Scope	Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) Economics and Econometrics