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

Silk JB, 2006. Behavior. Who are more helpful, humans or chimpanzees? Science 311:1248–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Calabrese EJ, Baldwin LA, 2003. Toxicology rethinks its central belief. Nature 421:691–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

Scarola VW, Park K, Jain JK, 2000. Cooper instability of composite fermions. Nature 406:863–5.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

de Ruiter PC, Wolters V, Moore JC, Winemiller KO, 2005. Ecology. Food web ecology: playing Jenga and beyond. Science 309:68–71.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kenny T, 2014. The Nuts and Bolts of Implantable Device Therapy Pacemakers. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Alberts D, Lluria-Prevatt M, Kha S, Weihs K (Eds), 2016. Supportive Cancer Care. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Krause J, Langhirt C, Sterff A, Pehlke B, Döring M, 2010. External Data Access. In: Langhirt C, Sterff A, Pehlke B, Döring M (eds) SharePoint 2010 as a Development Platform. Apress, Berkeley, CA, pp 255–94.

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, 2014. Amber Reveals Lyme Disease Is Older Than Humanity. IFLScience Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/amber-reveals-lyme-disease-older-humanity/

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, 1988. Civil Agency Aircraft: Agencies’ Use of Certain Aircraft to Transport Passengers. 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

Kirk C, 2017. Early Maladaptive Attachment Styles and Psychological Aggression in Romantic Relationships: A Content Analysis, 2006-2016. 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

McKINLEY JC Jr, 2017. Rikers Guards Accused of Turning a Blind Eye to, or Even Enabling, Sex Assaults. New York Times:A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Silk, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Calabrese and Baldwin, 2003; Silk, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Calabrese and Baldwin, 2003)
Three or more authors: (de Ruiter 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