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

Triplett, W. (2000). Astronomers silenced in star-name wars. Nature, 406(6795), 448.

A journal article with 2 authors

Drake, J. J., & Testa, P. (2005). The “solar model problem” solved by the abundance of neon in nearby stars. Nature, 436(7050), 525–528.

A journal article with 3 authors

Friis, E. M., Pedersen, K. R., & Crane, P. R. (2001). Fossil evidence of water lilies (Nymphaeales) in the Early Cretaceous. Nature, 410(6826), 357–360.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Gröning, O., Wang, S., Yao, X., Pignedoli, C. A., Borin Barin, G., Daniels, C., et al. (2018). Engineering of robust topological quantum phases in graphene nanoribbons. Nature, 560(7717), 209–213.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gywat, O., Krenner, H. J., & Berezovsky, J. (2009). Spins in Optically Active Quantum Dots. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Satapathy, S. C., Avadhani, P. S., Udgata, S. K., & Lakshminarayana, S. (Eds.). (2014). ICT and Critical Infrastructure: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Convention of Computer Society of India- Vol I: Hosted by CSI Vishakapatnam Chapter (Vol. 248). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Vaquero, J. M. (2009). The Solar Diameter and the Astronomical Unit. In J. M. Vaquero (Ed.), The Sun Recorded Through History: Scientific Data Extracted from Historical Documents (pp. 217–278). New York, NY: 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 Precision Agriculture.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2016, May 12). Hyperloop Company Reveals Magnetic Levitation Tech That Will Reach Speeds Of 760mph. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/hyperloop-company-reveals-its-innovative-magnetic-levitation-will-reach-speed-760mph/. 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. (1994). High Performance Computing and Communications: New Program Direction Would Benefit from a More Focused Effort (No. AIMD-95-6). 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

Lakin, B. K. (2009). Reading First program effects on students with disabilities (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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

Detrick, B. (2016, September 15). Not Everyone Is a Football Fan. New York Times, p. D10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Triplett 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Drake and Testa 2005; Triplett 2000).

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

Two authors: (Drake and Testa 2005)
Three or more authors: (Gröning et al. 2018)

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