How to format your references using the Computers and Electronics in Agriculture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Computers and Electronics in 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:

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

McKee, M., 2012. Sally Ride (1951-2012). Nature 488, 460.

A journal article with 2 authors

Reinhoudt, D.N., Crego-Calama, M., 2002. Synthesis beyond the molecule. Science 295, 2403–2407.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ackman, J.B., Burbridge, T.J., Crair, M.C., 2012. Retinal waves coordinate patterned activity throughout the developing visual system. Nature 490, 219–225.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Acharya, U., Patel, S., Koundakjian, E., Nagashima, K., Han, X., Acharya, J.K., 2003. Modulating sphingolipid biosynthetic pathway rescues photoreceptor degeneration. Science 299, 1740–1743.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stoican, F., Olaru, S., 2013. Set-theoretic Fault-tolerant Control in Multisensor Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ USA.

An edited book

Link, A.N., Scherer, F.M. (Eds.), 2005. Essays in Honor of Edwin Mansfield: The Economics of R&D, Innovation, and Technological Change. Springer US, Boston, MA.

A chapter in an edited book

GIZ GmbH, 2015. Success Factor – Cooperation, in: GmbH, G. (Ed.), Cooperation Management for Practitioners: Managing Social Change with Capacity WORKS. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, pp. 52–59.

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 Computers and Electronics in Agriculture.

Blog post

Luntz, S., 2014. Scientists Create A Supernova Explosion In The Lab [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-create-supernova-explosion-lab/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1973. Progress and Problems in Achieving Objectives of School Lunch Program (No. B-178564). 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

Vincent, P.S., 2012. The State of Chaos (Doctoral dissertation). Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Barnes, B., Abrams, R., 2017. Beleaguered Weinstein Company Will Not Get a Planned Cash Infusion. New York Times B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McKee, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (McKee, 2012; Reinhoudt and Crego-Calama, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Reinhoudt and Crego-Calama, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Acharya et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
Abbreviation	Comput. Electron. Agric.
ISSN (print)	0168-1699
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Forestry Horticulture Computer Science Applications