How to format your references using the Soil Science and Plant Nutrition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Soil Science and Plant Nutrition. 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

Smaglik P 2005: Breaking the bottleneck. Nature, 434, 1047.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sack FD, Chen J-G 2009: Plant science. Pores in place. Science, 323, 592–593.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sakuda A, Hayashi A, Tatsumisago M 2013: Sulfide solid electrolyte with favorable mechanical property for all-solid-state lithium battery. Sci. Rep., 3, 2261.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Simmons NB, Seymour KL, Habersetzer J, Gunnell GF 2008: Primitive Early Eocene bat from Wyoming and the evolution of flight and echolocation. Nature, 451, 818–821.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tostmann K-H 2005: Korrosion. Korrosion. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, FRG.

An edited book

Roos J, Costa LRJ (Eds.) 2010: Scientific Computing in Electrical Engineering SCEE 2008. Scientific Computing in Electrical Engineering SCEE 2008. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

DeCapua A 2008: Introduction to Verbs and Verb Phrases. In: Grammar for Teachers: A Guide to American English for Native and Non-Native Speakers, Ed. DeCapua A, pp. 121–164. Springer US: Boston, MA.

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 Soil Science and Plant Nutrition.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J 2017: This Black Hole Has Been Eating A Star For 10 Years, Longer Than Any Observed Before. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/this-black-hole-has-been-eating-a-star-for-10-years-longer-than-any-observed-before/ (October, 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 1981: The Army’s Battery Computer System. The Army’s Battery Computer System. 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

Shakya M 2017: Planter Boxes and Rain Gardens for Urban Stormwater Management: Performance of Extended Field Application. Planter Boxes and Rain Gardens for Urban Stormwater Management: Performance of Extended Field Application. Doctoral dissertation Thesis, 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

Sachs S 2001: CITY POPULATION TOPS 8 MILLION IN CENSUS COUNT FOR FIRST TIME. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Sack and Chen, 2009; Smaglik, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Sack and Chen, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Simmons et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Soil Science and Plant Nutrition
Abbreviation	Soil Sci. Plant Nutr.
ISSN (print)	0038-0768
ISSN (online)	1747-0765
Scope	Plant Science Soil Science