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

O’Meara, S. 2015. “At the very heart of progress.” Nature 528(7582):S179-81.

A journal article with 2 authors

Boehme, C., and D.R. McCamey. 2012. “Physics. Nuclear-spin quantum memory poised to take the lead.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 336(6086):1239–1240.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hollenstein, K., D.C. Frei, and K.P. Locher. 2007. “Structure of an ABC transporter in complex with its binding protein.” Nature 446(7132):213–216.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wu, C., R.A. Hember, J.M. Chen, W.A. Kurz, D.T. Price, C. Boisvenue, A. Gonsamo, and W. Ju. 2014. “Accelerating forest growth enhancement due to climate and atmospheric changes in British Colombia, Canada over 1956-2001.” Scientific reports 4:4461.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baban, T.M. 2016. Shallow Foundations. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Baltes, J., M.G. Lagoudakis, T. Naruse, and S.S. Ghidary eds. 2010. RoboCup 2009: Robot Soccer World Cup XIII. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Boone, W.J., J.R. Staver, and M.S. Yale. 2014. “Item Measures.” In J. R. Staver and M. S. Yale, eds. Rasch Analysis in the Human Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 93–110.

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, E. 2015. “Your Gut Bacteria Don’t Like Junk Food – Even If You Do.” IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/your-gut-bacteria-don-t-junk-food-even-if-you-do/ [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. 2001. “Electronic Government: Challenges Must Be Addressed With Effective Leadership and Management.” No. GAO-01-959T, 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

Smith, J.R. 2010. The evolving profile of alternative tobacco use in California. 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

Williams, J. 2017. “Eleanor’s Encouragement.” New York Times:BR4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (O’Meara 2015).
This sentence cites two references (O’Meara 2015; Boehme and McCamey 2012).

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

Two authors: (Boehme and McCamey 2012)
Three authors: (Hollenstein, Frei and Locher 2007)
4 or more authors: (Wu et al. 2014)

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