How to format your references using the The Journal of Agricultural Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Agricultural 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	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

Rodriguez, I. (2014). Neurobiology: To care or not to care. Nature, 509, 294–296.

A journal article with 2 authors

Johnston, M. & Stormo, G.D. (2003). Evolution. Heirlooms in the attic. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302, 997–999.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pandey, S., Goswami, G.K. & Nanda, K.K. (2013). Nanocomposite based flexible ultrasensitive resistive gas sensor for chemical reactions studies. Scientific reports, 3, 2082.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Varón, M., Beleggia, M., Kasama, T., Harrison, R.J., Dunin-Borkowski, R.E., Puntes, V.F. & Frandsen, C. (2013). Dipolar magnetism in ordered and disordered low-dimensional nanoparticle assemblies. Scientific reports, 3, 1234.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Borchard-Tuch, C. & Groß, M. (2005). Was Biotronik Alles Kann. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Sakai, Y. & Vassilicos, C. (eds). (2016). Fractal Flow Design: How to Design Bespoke Turbulence and Why. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Fort, J., Isern, N., Jerardino, A. & Rondelli, B. (2016). Population Spread and Cultural Transmission in Neolithic Transitions. In Simulating Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds Computational Social Sciences. (Eds J.A. Barceló & F. Del Castillo), pp. 189–197. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 The Journal of Agricultural Science.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016). Scientists Finally Understand The 100-Year-Old Mystery Of This Sea Blob, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-finally-understand-the-100yearold-mystery-of-this-sea-blob/

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. (1989). Space Operations: Listing of NASA Scientific Missions, 1980-2000. 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

Svarda, D. (2010). Man 2 Man. 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

Greenhouse, L. (2008). Justices Uphold Lethal Injection In Kentucky Case. 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 (Rodriguez 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Johnston & Stormo 2003; Rodriguez 2014).

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

Two authors: (Johnston & Stormo 2003)
Three or more authors: (Varón et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of Agricultural Science
Abbreviation	J. Agric. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0021-8596
ISSN (online)	1469-5146
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Animal Science and Zoology Genetics