How to format your references using the American Journal of Agricultural Economics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE). 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

Vernos, I. 2013. “Research management: Quotas are questionable.” Nature 495(7439):39.

A journal article with 2 authors

Xavier, R.J., and D.K. Podolsky. 2007. “Unravelling the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease.” Nature 448(7152):427–434.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kim, B.S., K.S. Yook, and J.Y. Lee. 2014. “Above 20% external quantum efficiency in novel hybrid white organic light-emitting diodes having green thermally activated delayed fluorescent emitter.” Scientific reports 4:6019.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Holbrook, W.S., P. Páramo, S. Pearse, and R.W. Schmitt. 2003. “Thermohaline fine structure in an oceanographic front from seismic reflection profiling.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 301(5634):821–824.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baldwin, P. 2010. OSx86. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Craig, R.G., and A.R. Kamer eds. 2016. A Clinician’s Guide to Systemic Effects of Periodontal Diseases. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Aldon, L., C.M. Ionica, P.E. Lippens, D. Larcher, J.-M. Tarascon, J. Olivier-Fourcade, and J.-C. Jumas. 2007. “In situ 119Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy used to study lithium insertion in c-Mg2Sn.” In P.-E. Lippens, J.-C. Jumas, and J.-M. R. Génin, eds. ICAME 2005: Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (ICAME 2005) held in Montpellier, France, 4–9 September 2005 Volume II (Part III–V/V). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 729–732.

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 American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Blog post

Andrew, D. 2016. “Humans Now Drive Evolution On Earth, Both Creating And Destroying Species.” IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/humans-now-drive-evolution-on-earth-both-creating-and-destroying-species/ [Accessed October 30, 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. “NASA’s Earth Observing System: Estimated Funding Requirements.” No. NSIAD-95-175, 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

Pan, C.-M. 2012. Synthesis and Evaluation of Macrocycles as Potential Antitumor Agents. Doctoral dissertation. La Jolla, CA: University of California San Diego.

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

Koblin, J. 2017. “Hackers Briefly Seize HBO’s Twitter Account in the Latest in a Series of Breaches.” New York Times:B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Vernos 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Vernos 2013; Xavier and Podolsky 2007).

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

Two authors: (Xavier and Podolsky 2007)
Three authors: (Kim, Yook and Lee 2014)
4 or more authors: (Holbrook et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Agricultural Economics
Abbreviation	Am. J. Agric. Econ.
ISSN (print)	0002-9092
ISSN (online)	1467-8276
Scope	Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) Economics and Econometrics