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

Weitz DA, 2009. Materials science. Unjamming a polymer glass. Science 323:214–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Suster ML, Bate M, 2002. Embryonic assembly of a central pattern generator without sensory input. Nature 416:174–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ta VD, Chen R, Sun HD, 2013. Tuning whispering gallery mode lasing from self-assembled polymer droplets. Sci. Rep. 3:1362.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Woo PCY, Lam C-W, Tam EWT, Lee K-C, Yung KKY, Leung CKF, Sze K-H, Lau SKP, Yuen K-Y, 2014. The biosynthetic pathway for a thousand-year-old natural food colorant and citrinin in Penicillium marneffei. Sci. Rep. 4:6728.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wright D, 2016. Using Commercial Contracts. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Rainieri C, 2014. Operational Modal Analysis of Civil Engineering Structures: An Introduction and Guide for Applications (G. Fabbrocino, Ed.). Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Andrade-Cetto J, Sanfeliu A, 2006. Unscented Transformation of Vehicle States. In: Sanfeliu A (ed) Environment Learning for Indoor Mobile Robots: A Stochastic State Estimation Approach to Simultaneous Localization and Map Building. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 97–106.

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

Hale T, 2016. The Best Of The 2016 National Geographic Travel Photographer Of The Year So Far. IFLScience Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/best-national-geographic-travelers-photographer-year-contest-2016/

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, 1999. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Light Truck Average Fuel Economy Standard, Model Year 2001. 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

Alalshaikh SA, 2017. Leadership Styles in Saudi Arabian Universities: Comparison Based on Educational Background. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Feeney K, 2009. A Tea ‘Room,’ on 2 Floors. New York Times:NJ12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Weitz, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Suster and Bate, 2002; Weitz, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Suster and Bate, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Woo et al., 2014)

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