How to format your references using the Soil Science and Plant Nutrition citation style

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

Butt H-J 2011: Materials science. Controlling the flow of suspensions. Science, 331, 868–869.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dominé F, Shepson PB 2002: Air-snow interactions and atmospheric chemistry. Science, 297, 1506–1510.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chandra P, Coleman P, Flint R 2013: Hastatic order in the heavy-fermion compound URu2Si2. Nature, 493, 621–626.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Shelly DR, Beroza GC, Ide S, Nakamula S 2006: Low-frequency earthquakes in Shikoku, Japan, and their relationship to episodic tremor and slip. Nature, 442, 188–191.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anichini G, Carraro F, Geslin P, Guille-Escuret G 2017: Technicity vs Scientificity. Technicity vs Scientificity. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Coecke B (Ed.) 2011: New Structures for Physics. New Structures for Physics. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Cawley O, Wang X, Richardson I 2010: Lean/Agile Software Development Methodologies in Regulated Environments – State of the Art. In: Lean Enterprise Software and Systems: First International Conference, LESS 2010, Helsinki, Finland, October 17-20, 2010. Proceedings, Eds. Abrahamsson P, Oza N, pp. 31–36. 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 Science and Plant Nutrition.

Blog post

Davis J 2017: New Zealand Birds May Be Singing Songs Not Heard In The UK For Over 100 Years. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-zealand-birds-may-be-singing-songs-not-heard-in-the-uk-for-over-100-years/ (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 1985: Review of Two Proposed Automatic Data Processing Procurements by the Social Security Administration. Review of Two Proposed Automatic Data Processing Procurements by the Social Security Administration. 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

Garcia RI 2009: Variable selection for models with missing data. Variable selection for models with missing data. Doctoral dissertation Thesis, University of North Carolina.

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

Walsh MW 2014: Deal Is Said to Be Close in Detroit’s Bankruptcy. New York Times, A26.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Butt, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Butt, 2011; Dominé and Shepson, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Dominé and Shepson, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Shelly et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Soil Science and Plant Nutrition
Abbreviation	Soil Sci. Plant Nutr.
ISSN (print)	0038-0768
ISSN (online)	1747-0765
Scope	Plant Science Soil Science