How to format your references using the Organic Agriculture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Organic Agriculture. 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
Gächter S (2015) Behavioural economics: Visible inequality breeds more inequality. Nature 526:333–334
A journal article with 2 authors
Long L, Ye H (2014) How to be smart and energy efficient: a general discussion on thermochromic windows. Sci Rep 4:6427
A journal article with 3 authors
Blum R, Kafitz KW, Konnerth A (2002) Neurotrophin-evoked depolarization requires the sodium channel Na(V)1.9. Nature 419:687–693
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Kerner M, Hohenberg H, Ertl S, et al (2003) Self-organization of dissolved organic matter to micelle-like microparticles in river water. Nature 422:150–154

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Raju KSN (2011) Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and Mass Transfer. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Harris D (ed) (2011) Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics: 9th International Conference, EPCE 2011, Held as Part of HCI International 2011, Orlando, FL, USA, July 9-14, 2011. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Sprumont Y (2008) Monotonicity and Solidarity Axioms in Economics and Game Theory. In: Pattanaik PK, Tadenuma K, Xu Y, Yoshihara N (eds) Rational Choice and Social Welfare: Theory and Applications Essays in Honor of Kotaro Suzumura. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 71–94

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 Organic Agriculture.

Blog post
Carpineti A (2017) Astronomers Have Seen The Farthest Blazars Yet. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-have-seen-the-farthest-blazars-yet/. 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 (2008) Public Transportation: Improvements Are Needed to More Fully Assess Predicted Impacts of New Starts Projects. 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
Scuderi NF (2010) Servant leadership and transformational leadership in church organizations. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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
Kolomatsky M (2017) International Rents Per Square Foot. New York Times RE2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gächter 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Long and Ye 2014; Gächter 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Long and Ye 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Kerner et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleOrganic Agriculture
ISSN (print)1879-4238
ISSN (online)1879-4246
ScopeGeneral Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Other styles