How to format your references using the Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition. 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

Taylor WR (2000) A deeply knotted protein structure and how it might fold. Nature 406:916–919

A journal article with 2 authors

Denicourt C, Dowdy SF (2004) Medicine. Targeting apoptotic pathways in cancer cells. Science 305:1411–1413

A journal article with 3 authors

Bosmans F, Martin-Eauclaire M-F, Swartz KJ (2008) Deconstructing voltage sensor function and pharmacology in sodium channels. Nature 456:202–208

A journal article with 15 or more authors

Bañados E, Venemans BP, Mazzucchelli C, et al (2018) An 800-million-solar-mass black hole in a significantly neutral Universe at a redshift of 7.5. Nature 553:473–476

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baldwin P (2010) OSx86. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA

An edited book

Fossorier MPC, Imai H, Lin S, Poli A (eds) (2006) Applied Algebra, Algebraic Algorithms and Error-Correcting Codes: 16th International Symposium, AAECC-16, Las Vegas, NV, USA, February 20-24, 2006. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Slutsky DJ (2015) Osteoarthritis of the Thumb. In: Trail IA, Fleming ANM (eds) Disorders of the Hand: Volume 3: Inflammation, Arthritis and Contractures. Springer, London, pp 71–91

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 Science and Plant Nutrition.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) The Deadly Poison Lurking In A Frog The Size Of Your Fingernail. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/deadly-poison-lurking-frog-size-your-fingernail/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1992) Granite Sentry. 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

Narayanan BC (2008) Structure function diversity within the phosphoenolpyruvate mutase/isocitrate lyase superfamily as revealed by the enzymes oxaloacetate decarboxylase and 2,3-dimethylmalate lyase. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Chira S (2017) Women Interrupted. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Taylor 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Denicourt and Dowdy 2004; Taylor 2000).

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

Two authors: (Denicourt and Dowdy 2004)
Three or more authors: (Bañados et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition
ISSN (print)	0718-9508
ISSN (online)	0718-9516
Scope