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

Ruiz-Casares, M., 2014. Mental health: Tailor informed-consent processes. Nature 513, 304.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lau, W.C.Y., Rubinstein, J.L., 2011. Subnanometre-resolution structure of the intact Thermus thermophilus H+-driven ATP synthase. Nature 481, 214–218.

A journal article with 3 authors

Evaristo, J., Jasechko, S., McDonnell, J.J., 2015. Global separation of plant transpiration from groundwater and streamflow. Nature 525, 91–94.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Endo, M., Muramatsu, H., Hayashi, T., Kim, Y.A., Terrones, M., Dresselhaus, M.S., 2005. Nanotechnology: “buckypaper” from coaxial nanotubes. Nature 433, 476.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Askoolum, A., 2007. System Building with APL + Win. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Shekhar, R., Wesarg, S., González Ballester, M.Á., Drechsler, K., Sato, Y., Erdt, M., Linguraru, M.G., Oyarzun Laura, C. (Eds.), 2016. Clinical Image-Based Procedures. Translational Research in Medical Imaging: 5th International Workshop, CLIP 2016, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2016, Athens, Greece, October 17, 2016, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Schouten, M., Papaloukas, N., Bielefeld, P., Fratantoni, S.A., Fitzsimons, C.P., 2016. Epigenetic Mechanisms Regulating the Transition from Embryonic Stem Cells Towards a Differentiated Neural Progeny, in: Steinhoff, G. (Ed.), Regenerative Medicine - from Protocol to Patient: 1. Biology of Tissue Regeneration. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 151–173.

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

Andrew, E., 2014. Hundreds of sharks now on Twitter [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/hundreds-sharks-now-twitter/ (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, 2003. Corps of Engineers: Effects of Restrictions on Corps’ Hopper Dredges Should Be Comprehensively Analyzed (No. GAO-03-382). 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

Faello, J.P., 2012. Is strong corporate governance associated with informative income smoothing? (Doctoral dissertation). Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

Douglas Stone, A., Schwab-Stone, M., 2016. Why College Is Not Home. New York Times ED21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ruiz-Casares, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Lau and Rubinstein, 2011; Ruiz-Casares, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Lau and Rubinstein, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Endo et al., 2005)

About the journal

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