How to format your references using the California Agriculture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for California Agriculture. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Smaglik P. 2004. How to succeed in business. Nature, 428:675.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bright AT & Winzeler EA. 2013. Epidemiology: resistance mapping in malaria. Nature, 498:446–447.
A journal article with 3 authors
Reichman OJ, Jones MB & Schildhauer MP. 2011. Challenges and opportunities of open data in ecology. Science, 331:703–705.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Hinde E, Yokomori K, Gaus K et al. 2014. Fluctuation-based imaging of nuclear Rac1 activation by protein oligomerisation. Sci Rep, 4:4219.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Lippold JC. 2015. Welding Metallurgy and Weldability, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.
An edited book
Bisognano JD, Earley MB & Baker ML eds. 2009. Manual of Heart Failure Management, London: Springer. XIV, 266 p. 53 illus., 13 illus. in color p.
A chapter in an edited book
Aebi V & Costello K. 2011. Electron Bombarded Semiconductor Image Sensors. In: Seitz P, Theuwissen AJP, (eds.). Single-Photon Imaging. Springer Series in Optical Sciences. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, p. 63–72.

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 California Agriculture.

Blog post
Luntz S. 2014. Cuckoos Use Mafia Tactics, And They Work. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/cuckoos-use-mafia-tactics-and-they-work/ [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. 1993. High-Speed Ground Transportation: Issues Affecting Development in the United States, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. p.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Zometa E. 2017. Imaging Service Consultations: Imaging Express. Doctoral dissertation. Long Beach, CA: 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
Barron J. 2016. Now Arriving on the New York Subway: Free E-Books, Timed for Your Commute. New York Times:A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik 2004; Bright & Winzeler 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Bright & Winzeler 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Hinde et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleCalifornia Agriculture
AbbreviationCalif. Agric. (Berkeley)
ISSN (print)0008-0845
ISSN (online)2160-8091
Scope

Other styles