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

Lloyd, S., 2012. Physics. Quantum procrastination. Science 338, 621–622.

A journal article with 2 authors

Richter, D.D., Jr, Mobley, M.L., 2009. Environment. Monitoring Earth’s critical zone. Science 326, 1067–1068.

A journal article with 3 authors

Paolo, F.S., Fricker, H.A., Padman, L., 2015. Ice sheets. Volume loss from Antarctic ice shelves is accelerating. Science 348, 327–331.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ma, L.Q., Komar, K.M., Tu, C., Zhang, W., Cai, Y., Kennelley, E.D., 2001. A fern that hyperaccumulates arsenic. Nature 409, 579.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Praetorius, S., Schößer, B., 2016. Bentonithandbuch. Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin, Germany.

An edited book

Brouns, I., 2012. Novel Insights in the Neurochemistry and Function of Pulmonary Sensory Receptors, Advances in Anatomy, Embryology and Cell Biology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

King, J.A., Chaney, E.E., 2011. Passing for Black in Seventeenth-Century Maryland, in: Beaudry, M.C., Symonds, J. (Eds.), Interpreting the Early Modern World: Transatlantic Perspectives, Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 87–112.

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., 2017. We Finally Know Why People Are Left- Or Right-Handed [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/finally-know-people-left-righthanded/ (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, 1971. Federal Funds Misused by the School System in Trimble County, Kentucky (No. B-164031(1)). 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

Meyer, M.A., 2014. Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Mediterranean Mussel, Mytilus galloprovincialis (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Hubbard, B., 2017. A Clown and a Correspondent Join the Global Elite. New York Times A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lloyd, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Lloyd, 2012; Richter and Mobley, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Richter and Mobley, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Ma et al., 2001)

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