How to format your references using the Agronomy Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Agronomy Journal. 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
del Alamo, J.A. 2011. Nanometre-scale electronics with III-V compound semiconductors. Nature 479(7373): 317–323.
A journal article with 2 authors
Kraemer, J.D., and L.O. Gostin. 2012. Public Health and biosecurity. The limits of government regulation of science. Science 335(6072): 1047–1049.
A journal article with 3 authors
Capraro, V., J.J. Jordan, and D.G. Rand. 2014. Heuristics guide the implementation of social preferences in one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma experiments. Sci. Rep. 4: 6790.
A journal article with 6 or more authors
Amedeo, P., Y. Habu, K. Afsar, O. Mittelsten Scheid, and J. Paszkowski. 2000. Disruption of the plant gene MOM releases transcriptional silencing of methylated genes. Nature 405(6783): 203–206.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Benslama, M., W. Kiamouche, and H. Batatia. 2015. Connections Management Strategies in Satellite Cellular Networks. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Kanosue, K., S. Oshima, Z.-B. Cao, and K. Oka, editors. 2015. Physical Activity, Exercise, Sedentary Behavior and Health. Springer Japan, Tokyo.
A chapter in an edited book
Vilanova, J.C., A. Luna, M. Morales, X. Albert, J. Barceló, et al. 2010. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance. In: Ribes, R., Kuschnir, P., Luna, A., Vilanova, J.C., and Jimenez-Hoyuela, J.M., editors, Learning Cardiac Imaging. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. p. 75–126

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 Journal.

Blog post
Andrews, R. 2017. America’s Cicadas Are Mysteriously Appearing Four Years Early. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/americas-cicadas-mysteriously-appearing-four-years-early/ (accessed 30 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. 2007. Data Mining: Early Attention to Privacy in Developing a Key DHS Program Could Reduce Risks. 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
Rogers, S.L. 2017. Fear of Cancer and Theory of Planned Behavior as Predictors of Pap Screenings.

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
Feldstein, M.S., T. Halstead, and N. Gregory Mankiw. 2017. A Conservative Case for Climate Action. New York Times: A25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (del Alamo, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (del Alamo, 2011; Kraemer and Gostin, 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Kraemer and Gostin, 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Amedeo et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titleAgronomy Journal
AbbreviationAgron. J.
ISSN (print)1435-0645
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science

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