How to format your references using the Agricultural Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Agricultural Systems. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Colegrave, N., 2002. Sex releases the speed limit on evolution. Nature 420, 664–666.

A journal article with 2 authors

Povolotskaya, I.S., Kondrashov, F.A., 2010. Sequence space and the ongoing expansion of the protein universe. Nature 465, 922–926.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xu, H., DeLuca, S.Z., O’Farrell, P.H., 2008. Manipulating the metazoan mitochondrial genome with targeted restriction enzymes. Science 321, 575–577.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Patton, G.C., Olsson, C.A., Skirbekk, V., Saffery, R., Wlodek, M.E., Azzopardi, P.S., Stonawski, M., Rasmussen, B., Spry, E., Francis, K., Bhutta, Z.A., Kassebaum, N.J., Mokdad, A.H., Murray, C.J.L., Prentice, A.M., Reavley, N., Sheehan, P., Sweeny, K., Viner, R.M., Sawyer, S.M., 2018. Adolescence and the next generation. Nature 554, 458–466.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McAulay, A.D., 2011. Military Laser Technology for Defense. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Farooqui, A.A., 2007. Glycerophospholipids in the Brain: Phospholipases A2 in Neurological Disorders. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Engelhardt, B., 2007. α4-integrins: structure, function and secrets, in: Ley, K. (Ed.), Adhesion Molecules: Function and Inhibition, Progress in Inflammation Research. Birkhäuser, Basel, pp. 117–139.

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 Agricultural Systems.

Blog post

Luntz, S., 2016. Plants Can Learn By Association, Just Like Pavlov’s Dogs [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/plants-can-learn-by-association-just-like-pavlovs-dogs-/ (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, 1983. GAO ADP Data Lines: Issue No. 2 (No. 122632). 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

Williams, B., 2017. The Impact on Reunification for Families with Incarcerated Parents: A Policy Analysis of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Cooper, M., 2014. Not Over Till Overtime’s Due? Met Labor Strife Bares Secrets. 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 (Colegrave, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Colegrave, 2002; Povolotskaya and Kondrashov, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Povolotskaya and Kondrashov, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Patton et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Agricultural Systems
Abbreviation	Agric. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0308-521X
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Animal Science and Zoology