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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Brophy, P.J. 2002. Microbiology. Subversion of Schwann cells and the leper’s bell. Science 296(5569): 862–863.
A journal article with 2 authors
Maher, B.A., and P.F. Dennis. 2001. Evidence against dust-mediated control of glacial-interglacial changes in atmospheric CO2. Nature 411(6834): 176–180.
A journal article with 3 authors
Schmitz, D., J. Mellor, and R.A. Nicoll. 2001. Presynaptic kainate receptor mediation of frequency facilitation at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses. Science 291(5510): 1972–1976.
A journal article with 6 or more authors
Li, Q., W. Zhang, O.S. Miljanić, C.-H. Sue, Y.-L. Zhao, et al. 2009. Docking in metal-organic frameworks. Science 325(5942): 855–859.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Aubry, J.-F., and N. Brînzei. 2015. Systems Dependability Assessment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Elliott, S.G., M.A. Foote, and G. Molineux, editors. 2009. Erythropoietins, Erythropoietic Factors, and Erythropoiesis: Molecular, Cellular, Preclinical, and Clinical Biology. 2nd Revised and Extended Edition. Birkhäuser, Basel.
A chapter in an edited book
Nagurney, A., M. Yu, and J. Floden. 2015. Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Ecolabeling. In: Choi, T.-M. and Cheng, T.C.E., editors, Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management: From Sourcing to Retailing. Springer International Publishing, Cham. p. 61–84

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
Davis, J. 2017. Color-Changing Bacteria Could Be Used To Diagnose Gut Diseases From Poop. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/colorchanging-bacteria-could-be-used-to-diagnose-gut-diseases-from-poop/ (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. 1977. Report to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare on Fundamental Improvements Needed for Timely Promulgation of Health Program Regulations. 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
Gomez-Zuebisch, L.C. 2010. A phenomenological exploration of the learning values derived from instructional short videos among adult learners.

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
Chira, S. 2017. Cosby as a Lens on the Gender Beat. New York Times: A2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brophy, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Maher and Dennis, 2001; Brophy, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Maher and Dennis, 2001)
  • Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleSoil Science Society of America Journal
AbbreviationSoil Sci. Soc. Am. J.
ISSN (print)0361-5995
ScopeSoil Science

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