How to format your references using the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (JSWC). 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Smaglik, P. 2004. Making the match. Nature 431(7012):1125.
A journal article with 2 authors
Kippenberg, T. J., and K. J. Vahala. 2008. Cavity optomechanics: back-action at the mesoscale. Science (New York, N.Y.) 321(5893):1172–1176.
A journal article with 3 authors
Artyukhin, A. B., F. C. Schroeder, and L. Avery. 2013. Density dependence in Caenorhabditis larval starvation. Scientific reports 3 (September 27, 2013):2777.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Aouadi, M., G. J. Tesz, S. M. Nicoloro, M. Wang, M. Chouinard, E. Soto, G. R. Ostroff, and M. P. Czech. 2009. Orally delivered siRNA targeting macrophage Map4k4 suppresses systemic inflammation. Nature 458(7242):1180–1184.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Kaul, S., F. Ali, S. Janakiram, and B. Wattenström. 2008. Business Models for Sustainable Telecoms Growth in Developing Economies. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Liu, J. 2005. Autonomy Oriented Computing: From Problem Solving to Complex Systems Modeling. (X. Jin and K. C. Tsui, Eds.). Boston, MA: Springer US.
A chapter in an edited book
Blaum, K., D. Beck, M. Breitenfeldt, S. George, F. Herfurth, A. Herlert, A. Kellerbauer, H.-J. Kluge, D. Lunney, R. Savreux, S. Schwarz, L. Schweikhard, and C. Yazidjian. 2007. Penning trap mass spectrometry for nuclear structure studies. In LASER 2006: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Application of Lasers in Atomic Nuclei Research “Nuclear Ground and Isometric State Properties” (LASER 2006) held in Poznán, Poland, 29 May–1 June 2006, ed. Z. Błaszczak, B. Markov, and K. Marinova, 83–91. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Journal of Soil and Water Conservation.

Blog post
Andrew, E. 2015, August 12. Archaeologists Believe They May Have Found Queen Nefertiti’s Tomb. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/archaeologists-believes-he-may-have-found-queen-nefertitis-tomb/.

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. 2000. Intercity Passenger Rail: Decisions on the Future of Amtrak and Intercity Passenger Rail Are Approaching. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Dixon, L. K. 2009. Tracing anthropogenic wastes: Detection of fluorescent optical brighteners in a gradient of natural organic matter fluorescence. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida.

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
Hollander, S. 2002, October 13. Leading by 21 Points, Lions Cannot Hold On. New York Times (October 13, 2002):84.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik 2004, Kippenberg and Vahala 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Kippenberg and Vahala 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Aouadi et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Soil and Water Conservation
AbbreviationJ. Soil Water Conserv.
ISSN (print)0022-4561
ISSN (online)1941-3300
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Soil Science
Nature and Landscape Conservation
Water Science and Technology

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