How to format your references using the Precision Agriculture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Precision 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:

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

Mackenzie, D. (2000). MATHEMATICS: Taking the Measure of the Wildest Dance on Earth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 290(5498), 1883–1884.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yu, L., & Lenardo, M. J. (2003). Immunology. The paracaspase connection. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5650), 1515–1516.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kraft, N. J. B., Valencia, R., & Ackerly, D. D. (2008). Functional traits and niche-based tree community assembly in an Amazonian forest. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5901), 580–582.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hellal, F., Hurtado, A., Ruschel, J., Flynn, K. C., Laskowski, C. J., Umlauf, M., et al. (2011). Microtubule stabilization reduces scarring and causes axon regeneration after spinal cord injury. Science (New York, N.Y.), 331(6019), 928–931.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Engle, C. R., Quagrainie, K. K., & Dey, M. M. (2016). Seafood and Aquaculture Marketing Handbook. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Pavlov, A. (2008). CMOS SRAM Circuit Design and Parametric Test in Nano-Scaled Technologies: Process-Aware SRAM Design and Test. (M. Sachdev, Ed.) (Vol. 40). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Sato, S., & Kise, K. (2015). ArchHDL: A Novel Hardware RTL Design Environment in C++. In K. Sano, D. Soudris, M. Hübner, & P. C. Diniz (Eds.), Applied Reconfigurable Computing: 11th International Symposium, ARC 2015, Bochum, Germany, April 13-17, 2015, Proceedings (pp. 53–64). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Precision Agriculture.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016, September 13). Fossil Evidence Reveals That Cancer In Humans Goes Back 1.7 Million Years. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/fossil-evidence-reveals-that-cancer-in-humans-goes-back-1-point-7-million-years/. Accessed 30 October 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. (1977). Curriculum Case Studies Are of Questionable Quality but Helped Precollege Curriculum Activities (No. HRD-77-46). 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

Williams-Newball, T. I. (2014). Domain, Community and Practice: An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Communities of Practice and Professional Identity Among Veterinarians (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Mueller, B., Southall, A., & Baker, A. L. (2016, August 4). Social Circles Collide on the Dance Floor. Then, a Deadly Brawl. New York Times, p. A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mackenzie 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Mackenzie 2000; Yu and Lenardo 2003).

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

Two authors: (Yu and Lenardo 2003)
Three or more authors: (Hellal et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Precision Agriculture
Abbreviation	Precis. Agric.
ISSN (print)	1385-2256
ISSN (online)	1573-1618
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences