How to format your references using the Soil Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Soil Research. 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

Johnstone RA (2002) The evolution of inaccurate mimics. Nature 418, 524–526.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rivera LB, Bergers G (2014) Angiogenesis. Targeting vascular sprouts. Science (New York, NY) 344, 1449–1450.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schumacher MA, Hurlburt BK, Brennan RG (2001) Crystal structures of SarA, a pleiotropic regulator of virulence genes in S. aureus. Nature 409, 215–219.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chakrabarty RK, Beres ND, Moosmüller H, China S, Mazzoleni C, Dubey MK, Liu L, Mishchenko MI (2014) Soot superaggregates from flaming wildfires and their direct radiative forcing. Scientific Reports 4, 5508.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lee Abbott M, McKinney J (2012) ‘Understanding and Applying Research Design.’ (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ)

An edited book

Heather J, Schneider S, Teague V (Eds) (2013) ‘E-Voting and Identify: 4th International Conference, Vote-ID 2013, Guildford, UK, July 17-19, 2013. Proceedings.’ (Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg)

A chapter in an edited book

Chitchyan R, Fabry J, Katz S, Rensink A (2009) Editorial for Special Section on Dependencies and Interactions with Aspects. ‘Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development V’. (Eds A Rashid, H Ossher) Lecture Notes in Computer Science. pp. 133–134. (Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg)

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrews R (2016) South Africa Now Has The Continent’s First Solar-Powered Airport. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/south-africa-now-continents-first-solarpowered-airport/.

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 (2017) High Risk: Actions Needed to Address Serious Weaknesses in Federal Management of Programs Serving Indian Tribes. U.S. Government Printing Office, GAO-17-587T. (Washington, DC)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Del Cid EJ (2009) Services for immigrant families with children in the child welfare system: A grant proposal project. 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

Saslow L (2007) Two Legislative Seats To Be Filled on March 27. New York Times 14LI2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Johnstone 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Johnstone 2002; Rivera and Bergers 2014).

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

Two authors: (Rivera and Bergers 2014)
Three or more authors: (Chakrabarty et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Soil Research
Abbreviation	Soil Res.
ISSN (print)	1838-675X
ISSN (online)	1838-6768
Scope	Soil Science Earth-Surface Processes Environmental Science (miscellaneous)