How to format your references using the Computers and Electronics in Agriculture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Computers and Electronics in 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Check, E., 2002. Fresh analyses put rice genomics on the map. Nature 420, 259.

A journal article with 2 authors

Weiss, R.B., Atkins, J.F., 2011. Molecular biology. Translation goes global. Science 334, 1509–1510.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jansen, J.F.A., Gearhart, J.D., Bulte, J.W.M., 2008. Comment on “Magnetic resonance spectroscopy identifies neural progenitor cells in the live human brain.” Science 321, 640.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ogawa, M., Shinohara, H., Sakagami, Y., Matsubayashi, Y., 2008. Arabidopsis CLV3 peptide directly binds CLV1 ectodomain. Science 319, 294.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ham, B.M., 2011. Proteomics of Biological Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Chemla, K. (Ed.), 2005. History of Science, History of Text, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

García-Colín, L.S., Dagdug, L., 2009. Calculation of the Currents, in: Dagdug, L. (Ed.), The Kinetic Theory of a Dilute Ionized Plasma, Springer Series on Atomic, Optical, and Plasma Physics. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 41–49.

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 Computers and Electronics in Agriculture.

Blog post

Davis, J., 2017. Melting Sea Ice Causing Hungry Polar Bears To Switch From Seals To Goose Nesting Sites [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/melting-sea-ice-causing-hungry-polar-bears-to-switch-from-seals-to-goose-nesting-sites/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2008. Runway Safety: Progress on Reducing Runway Incursions Impeded by Leadership, Technology, and Other Challenges (No. GAO-08-481T). 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

Huynhle, M., 2017. High-Fat Diet-Induced Obesity Increases Resilience against Gram-Negative Bacterial Infection in Drosophila Larvae (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

McKINLEY, J., Mueller, B., 2015. 2 Escapees Still at Large Despite 450-Officer Hunt in Remote, Swampy Area. New York Times A20.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Check, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Check, 2002; Weiss and Atkins, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Weiss and Atkins, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Ogawa et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
Abbreviation	Comput. Electron. Agric.
ISSN (print)	0168-1699
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Forestry Horticulture Computer Science Applications