How to format your references using the Agronomy for Sustainable Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Agronomy for Sustainable Development. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Sarewitz D (2013) Science’s rightful place is in service of society. Nature 502:595
A journal article with 2 authors
Wilson L, Head JW Iii (2007) An integrated model of kimberlite ascent and eruption. Nature 447:53–57
A journal article with 3 authors
Prosser BL, Ward CW, Lederer WJ (2011) X-ROS signaling: rapid mechano-chemo transduction in heart. Science 333:1440–1445
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Li WKW, McLaughlin FA, Lovejoy C, Carmack EC (2009) Smallest algae thrive as the Arctic Ocean freshens. Science 326:539

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Rachev ST, Kim YS, Bianchi ML, Fabozzi FJ (2011) Financial Models with Lévy Processes and Volatility Clustering. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Ito T, Hattori H, Zhang M, Matsuo T (eds) (2008) Rational, Robust, and Secure Negotiations in Multi-Agent Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Michor P (2011) Manifolds of differentiable maps. In: Villani V (ed) Differential Topology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 117–127

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 Agronomy for Sustainable Development.

Blog post
O`Callaghan J (2017) Saturn’s Rings May Have 1 Billion Years Left To Live. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/saturns-rings-may-have-1-billion-years-left-to-live/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1995) Highway Signs: Conversion to Metric Units Could Be Costly. 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
Geist C (2008) The marriage economy: Examining the economic impact and the context of marriage in comparative perspective. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana 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
Walsh MW (2017) Puerto Rico’s Troubled Finances Add to Vulnerability During Hurricane. New York Times B4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sarewitz 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Wilson and Head 2007; Sarewitz 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Wilson and Head 2007)
  • Three or more authors: (Li et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleAgronomy for Sustainable Development
AbbreviationAgron. Sustain. Dev.
ISSN (print)1774-0746
ISSN (online)1773-0155
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Environmental Engineering

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