How to format your references using the Italian Journal of Agronomy citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Italian Journal of Agronomy (IJA). 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

Kummel AC, 2003. Chemistry. How to assemble a molecular junction. Science 302:69–70.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rivenbark AG, Strahl BD, 2007. Molecular biology. Unlocking cell fate. Science 318:403–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gu LQ, Cheley S, Bayley H, 2001. Capture of a single molecule in a nanocavity. Science 291:636–40.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhu YF, Dai QQ, Zhao M, Jiang Q, 2013. Physicochemical insight into gap openings in graphene. Sci. Rep. 3:1524.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lunn G, Sansone EB, 2012. Destruction of Hazardous Chemicals in the Laboratory. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

He M, 2012. Metal-Dielectric Interfaces in Gigascale Electronics: Thermal and Electrical Stability (T.-M. Lu, Ed.). Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Bart H, Kaashoek MA, Ran ACM, 2010. Explicit solutions using realizations. In: Kaashoek MA, Ran ACM (eds) A State Space Approach to Canonical Factorization with Applications. Birkhäuser, Basel, pp 37–56.

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 Italian Journal of Agronomy.

Blog post

Andrew E, 2016. How The Power To Control Objects With Our Minds Stopped Being Science Fiction. IFLScience Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-power-control-objects-our-minds-stopped-being-science-fiction/

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, 1998. Intercity Passenger Rail: Prospects for Amtrak’s Financial Viability. 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

Ferreira TJ, 2010. Fragmented: Moving Away from Control. 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

Kenigsberg B, 2016. Review: In ‘Tank 432,’ on the Run, but Stuck in a Morass. New York Times:C6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kummel, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kummel, 2003; Rivenbark and Strahl, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Rivenbark and Strahl, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Zhu et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Italian Journal of Agronomy
Abbreviation	Ital. J. Agron.
ISSN (print)	1125-4718
ISSN (online)	2039-6805
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences