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

White, B.T., 2012. IBI series winner. Aipotu: simulation from nucleotides to populations and back again. Science 337, 424–425.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lane, J., Bertuzzi, S., 2011. Research funding. Measuring the results of science investments. Science 331, 678–680.

A journal article with 3 authors

Martin, A., Baker, T.A., Sauer, R.T., 2005. Rebuilt AAA + motors reveal operating principles for ATP-fuelled machines. Nature 437, 1115–1120.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Plikus, M.V., Mayer, J.A., de la Cruz, D., Baker, R.E., Maini, P.K., Maxson, R., Chuong, C.-M., 2008. Cyclic dermal BMP signalling regulates stem cell activation during hair regeneration. Nature 451, 340–344.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Knopf, F.C., 2011. Modeling, Analysis and Optimization of Process and Energy Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Bellatreche, L., Mohania, M.K. (Eds.), 2013. Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery: 15th International Conference, DaWaK 2013, Prague, Czech Republic, August 26-29, 2013. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Scesi, L., Gattinoni, P., 2010. Main Flow Direction in Rock Masses, in: Gattinoni, P. (Ed.), Water Circulation in Rocks. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 73–85.

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

Andrews, R., 2015. Humans Have More “Plastic,” Adaptable Brains Than Chimpanzees [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/humans-have-more-plastic-adaptable-brains-chimpanzees/ (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, 2011. Cost and Legal Authority for Selected Financial Literacy Programs and Activities (No. GAO-11-781R). 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

Cosma, A.C., 2019. Real-Time Individual Thermal Preferences Prediction Using Visual Sensors (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Shear, M.D., 2017. How White House Officials Explained That 18-Day Wait. 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 (White, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Lane and Bertuzzi, 2011; White, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Lane and Bertuzzi, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Plikus 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