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

Bennetzen J (2002) The rice genome. Opening the door to comparative plant biology. Science 296:60–63

A journal article with 2 authors

Julius D, Basbaum AI (2001) Molecular mechanisms of nociception. Nature 413:203–210

A journal article with 3 authors

Efferson C, Lalive R, Fehr E (2008) The coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup favoritism. Science 321:1844–1849

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Vulliamy T, Marrone A, Goldman F, et al (2001) The RNA component of telomerase is mutated in autosomal dominant dyskeratosis congenita. Nature 413:432–435

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Halstead P (2014) Two Oxen Ahead. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, UK

An edited book

Hofmann-Wellenhof B (2006) Physical Geodesy, Second, corrected edition. Springer, Vienna

A chapter in an edited book

Nagase H, Visse R (2011) Triple Helicase Activity and the Structural Basis of Collagenolysis. In: Parks WC, Mecham RP (eds) Extracellular Matrix Degradation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 95–122

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

Carpineti A (2016) Why Do Galaxies Stop Forming Stars? 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 (1991) Services for the Elderly: Longstanding Transportation Problems Need More Federal Attention. 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

Archibald GA (2008) Regionalizing competitive talent: An exploratory study of the role of human capital management in the context of economic integration and labor mobility. Doctoral dissertation, Capella 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

Wagner J (2017) Yankees Ride Out Chapman’s Latest Turbulence and Rebuff the Mets Again. New York Times B11

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bennetzen 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Julius and Basbaum 2001; Bennetzen 2002).

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

Two authors: (Julius and Basbaum 2001)
Three or more authors: (Vulliamy et al. 2001)

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