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

Chalmers M (2014) Medical research masterclass. Nature 514:S1

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang ZL, Song J (2006) Piezoelectric nanogenerators based on zinc oxide nanowire arrays. Science 312:242–246

A journal article with 3 authors

Chalasani R, Gupta A, Vasudevan S (2013) Engineering new layered solids from exfoliated inorganics: a periodically alternating hydrotalcite-montmorillonite layered hybrid. Sci Rep 3:3498

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Prodan E, Radloff C, Halas NJ, Nordlander P (2003) A hybridization model for the plasmon response of complex nanostructures. Science 302:419–422

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anwar S, Carroll JJ (2016) Carbon Dioxide Thermodynamic Properties Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Kole C (ed) (2011) Wild Crop Relatives: Genomic and Breeding Resources: Legume Crops and Forages. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Zhai D, Wu Y, Lu J, Yan F (2008) A Fuzzy Negotiation Model with Genetic Algorithms. In: Wang W, Li Y, Duan Z, et al. (eds) Integration and Innovation Orient to E-Society Volume 1: Seventh IFIP International Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society (I3E2007), October 10–12, Wuhan, China. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 35–43

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

Fang J (2015) Monogamous Penguins Are Apart More Often Than They’re Together. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/monogamous-penguins-are-apart-more-often-theyre-together/. 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 (1990) Highway Financing: Participating States Benefit Under Toll Facilities Pilot Program. 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

Calhoun GF (2009) Limit theory for overfit models. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Gregory Mankiw N (2015) A Slippery New Rule for Gauging Fiscal Policy. New York Times BU7

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chalmers 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Wang and Song 2006; Chalmers 2014).

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

Two authors: (Wang and Song 2006)
Three or more authors: (Prodan et al. 2003)

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