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

Russell TP, 2001. Polymer dynamics. Chance encounters. Science 293:446–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Micchelli CA, Perrimon N, 2006. Evidence that stem cells reside in the adult Drosophila midgut epithelium. Nature 439:475–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhu BO, Zhao J, Feng Y, 2013. Active impedance metasurface with full 360° reflection phase tuning. Sci. Rep. 3:3059.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Scheel O, Zdebik AA, Lourdel S, Jentsch TJ, 2005. Voltage-dependent electrogenic chloride/proton exchange by endosomal CLC proteins. Nature 436:424–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McMillan EJ, 2010. Not-for-Profit Budgeting and Financial Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Taniguchi M (Ed), 2011. Groundwater and Subsurface Environments: Human Impacts in Asian Coastal Cities. Springer Japan, Tokyo.

A chapter in an edited book

Lowder K, 2013. Fears. In: Fasching-Varner KJ, Eisworth HB, Mencer TH, Lindbom-Cho DR, Murray MC, Morton BC (eds) Student Teaching: A Journey in Narratives. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 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

O`Callaghan J, 2016. Watch Live As Blue Origin Purposefully Destroys Its Historic Rocket Tomorrow. IFLScience Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/watch-live-as-blue-origin-purposefully-destroys-its-historic-rocket-tomorrow/

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, 1997. Hispanic Employment: Best Practices Used by Selected Agencies and Companies. 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

Brown CE, 2013. Sources for the reevaluation of George Frederick Root’s career: The autobiography & a secular cantata. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD

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, 2017. The Listings; Film Series. New York Times:C23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Russell, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Russell, 2001; Micchelli and Perrimon, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Micchelli and Perrimon, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Scheel et al., 2005)

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