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

Towe KM (2002) The problematic rise of Archean oxygen. Science 295:1419

A journal article with 2 authors

Moran TG, Davila JM (2004) Three-dimensional polarimetric imaging of coronal mass ejections. Science 305:66–70

A journal article with 3 authors

Chen Q, Bae SC, Granick S (2011) Directed self-assembly of a colloidal kagome lattice. Nature 469:381–384

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Chia N-Y, Chan Y-S, Feng B, et al (2010) A genome-wide RNAi screen reveals determinants of human embryonic stem cell identity. Nature 468:316–320

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

bauforumstahl e.V. (2011) Beispiele zur Bemessung von Stahltragwerken nach DIN EN 1993 Eurocode 3. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

McGeer R, Berman M, Elliott C, Ricci R (eds) (2016) The GENI Book. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Kihara K, Fujii Y, Saito K, et al (2015) Gasless Two-Port Access RoboSurgeon Retroperitoneoscopic Radical Nephroureterectomy. In: Kihara K (ed) Gasless Single-Port RoboSurgeon Surgery in Urology. Springer Japan, Tokyo, pp 65–84

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

Luntz S (2014) Dramatic Battle Between Great White Sharks Caught On Camera. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/great-white-sharks-do-battle/. 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 (1984) Automatic Data Processing: A Career Challenge. 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

Lundahl Philpot E (2013) Social media adoption and use among information technology professionals and implications for leadership. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Vecsey G (2011) France Loses to the U.S., With Typical Elegance. New York Times B15

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Towe 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Towe 2002; Moran and Davila 2004).

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

Two authors: (Moran and Davila 2004)
Three or more authors: (Chia et al. 2010)

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

Research and Writing Guides