How to format your references using the Soil Science Society of America Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Soil Science Society of America Journal. 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

Catterall, W.A. 2001. Physiology. A one-domain voltage-gated sodium channel in bacteria. Science 294(5550): 2306–2308.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang, X., and B. Huang. 2014. Computational study of in-plane phonon transport in Si thin films. Sci. Rep. 4: 6399.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sugawara, T., F. Kano, and M. Murata. 2014. Rab2A is a pivotal switch protein that promotes either secretion or ER-associated degradation of (pro)insulin in insulin-secreting cells. Sci. Rep. 4: 6952.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Schliewen, U.K., T.D. Kocher, K.R. McKaye, O. Seehausen, and D. Tautz. 2006. Evolutionary biology: evidence for sympatric speciation? Nature 444(7120): E12-3; discussion E13.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Heads, G. 2017. Living Mindfully. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Schirner, G., M. Götz, A. Rettberg, M.C. Zanella, and F.J. Rammig, editors. 2013. Embedded Systems: Design, Analysis and Verification: 4th IFIP TC 10 International Embedded Systems Symposium, IESS 2013, Paderborn, Germany, June 17-19, 2013. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Aldashev, A. 2015. Convergence Across Regions in Kazakhstan. In: Mussida, C. and Pastore, F., editors, Geographical Labor Market Imbalances: Recent Explanations and Cures. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. p. 107–118

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 Society of America Journal.

Blog post

Andrews, R. 2016. These Extraordinary Wind Turbines Could Power Japan For Half A Century Using Just One Typhoon. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/these-extraordinary-wind-turbines-could-power-japan-for-half-a-century-using-just-one-typhoon/ (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. 2013. NASA: Assessments of Selected Large-Scale Projects. 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

Nevitt, D.S. 2017. Organic Geochemical Proxies as Indicators of Paleoenvironmental Conditions and Source Sediment Provenance in the Chenier Plain, Vermilion and Cameron Parishes, Louisiana, USA.

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

Pipher, M. 2013. Lighting a Spark On the High Plains. New York Times: A27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Catterall, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Catterall, 2001; Wang and Huang, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Wang and Huang, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Schliewen et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Soil Science Society of America Journal
Abbreviation	Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J.
ISSN (print)	0361-5995
Scope	Soil Science