How to format your references using the Soil Biology and Biochemistry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 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	Download the output style file
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

Laursen, L., 2015. Botany: The cultivation of weed. Nature 525, S4-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Subang, M.C., Richardson, P.M., 2009. Neuroscience. Nuclear power for axonal growth. Science (New York, N.Y.) 326, 238–239.

A journal article with 3 authors

Körtner, G., Brigham, R.M., Geiser, F., 2000. Winter torpor in a large bird. Nature 407, 318.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wang, Y., Li, L., Ma, C., Gao, C., Tao, F., Xu, P., 2013. Engineering of cofactor regeneration enhances (2S,3S)-2,3-butanediol production from diacetyl. Scientific Reports 3, 2643.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Omura, G., Benton, B.C., 2017. Mastering AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.

An edited book

Kugler, T., Smith, J.C., Connolly, T., Son, Y.-J. (Eds.), 2008. Decision Modeling and Behavior in Complex and Uncertain Environments, Springer Optimization and Its Applications. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Landau, L., Fettweis, G., 2016. Energy Efficient TSV Based Communication Employing 1-Bit Quantization at the Receiver, in: Elfadel, I. (abe) M., Fettweis, G. (Eds.), 3D Stacked Chips: From Emerging Processes to Heterogeneous Systems. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 85–100.

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 Soil Biology and Biochemistry.

Blog post

Luntz, S., 2014. New Evidence Plants Can “Think” And Make Decisions Based On Possible Future Risks [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-evidence-plants-can-think-and-make-decisions-based-possible-future-risks/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1969. Administration of Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (No. 092686). 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

Flores, D., 2014. The EastSide Café: A liberated learning zone (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Feeney, K., 2008. A Little Taste Of France. New York Times NJ9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Laursen, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Subang and Richardson, 2009; Laursen, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Subang and Richardson, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Soil Biology and Biochemistry
Abbreviation	Soil Biol. Biochem.
ISSN (print)	0038-0717
Scope	Soil Science Microbiology