How to format your references using the California Agriculture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for California Agriculture. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Russell JF. 2013. If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing twice. Nature, 496:7.
A journal article with 2 authors
Gautel M & Ehler E. 2010. Cell biology. Gett’N-WASP stripes. Science, 330:1491–1492.
A journal article with 3 authors
Coultas L, Chawengsaksophak K & Rossant J. 2005. Endothelial cells and VEGF in vascular development. Nature, 438:937–945.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Xiao S, Xiao F, Hu Y et al. 2014. Hierarchical nanoporous gold-platinum with heterogeneous interfaces for methanol electrooxidation. Sci Rep, 4:4370.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Caferra R. 2011. Logic for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.
An edited book
Regitz-Zagrosek V ed. 2012. Sex and Gender Differences in Pharmacology, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. X, 602 p p.
A chapter in an edited book
Kjøbsted R, Wojtaszewski JFP & Treebak JT. 2016. Role of AMP-Activated Protein Kinase for Regulating Post-exercise Insulin Sensitivity. In: Cordero MD, Viollet B, (eds.). AMP-activated Protein Kinase. Experientia Supplementum. Cham: Springer International Publishing, p. 81–126.

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 California Agriculture.

Blog post
Luntz S. 2015. Stunning New 1.5 BILLION Pixel Photograph Of Andromeda Galaxy Released. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/one-and-half-billion-pixels-andromedan-magnifcence/ [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. 1990. Air Traffic Control: The Interim Support Plan Does Not Meet FAA’s Needs, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. p.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Teeter CM. 2010. Characterizing the Spatial Density Functions of Neural Arbors. 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
Otis J. 2017. Falling Into Despair, and Taking Baby Steps to Get Off the Couch. New York Times:A26.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Russell 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Russell 2013; Gautel & Ehler 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Gautel & Ehler 2010)
  • Three or more authors: (Xiao et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleCalifornia Agriculture
AbbreviationCalif. Agric. (Berkeley)
ISSN (print)0008-0845
ISSN (online)2160-8091
Scope

Other styles