How to format your references using the Biology and Fertility of Soils citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biology and Fertility of Soils. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Church JA (2007) Oceans. A change in circulation? Science 317:908–909

A journal article with 2 authors

Macnaghten P, Owen R (2011) Environmental science: good governance for geoengineering. Nature 479:293

A journal article with 3 authors

Parker JS, Roe SM, Barford D (2005) Structural insights into mRNA recognition from a PIWI domain-siRNA guide complex. Nature 434:663–666

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kocot KM, Cannon JT, Todt C, et al (2011) Phylogenomics reveals deep molluscan relationships. Nature 477:452–456

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Camman C, Fiore C, Livolsi L, Querro P (2017) Supply Chain Management and Business Performance. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Jeschke S, Isenhardt I, Hees F, Henning K (eds) (2014) Automation, Communication and Cybernetics in Science and Engineering 2013/2014. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Saito K, Kubota H, Sumi Y, Nishida T (2006) Support for Content Creation Using Conversation Quanta. In: Washio T, Sakurai A, Nakajima K, et al. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence: Joint JSAI 2005 Workshop Post-Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 29–40

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 Biology and Fertility of Soils.

Blog post

Andrews R (2016) Hungry Young Stars Change Color When They Eat Their Own Planets. In: IFLScience. 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 (2002) Export Control: Army Guidance on Cooperative Research and Development Agreement Compliance with Export Control Laws and Regulations. 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

Cooper EA (2009) Missouri elementary teacher certification programs and the education provided on how boys and girls learn differently. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood 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

Barron J (2017) Some Gifts Go in the Closet. These Go on the Block. New York Times A19

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Church 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Church 2007; Macnaghten and Owen 2011).

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

Two authors: (Macnaghten and Owen 2011)
Three or more authors: (Kocot et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biology and Fertility of Soils
Abbreviation	Biol. Fertil. Soils
ISSN (print)	0178-2762
ISSN (online)	1432-0789
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Soil Science Microbiology