How to format your references using the The Crop Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Crop 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
[1]
G.F. Bignami, History of science. Sputnik and satellite astronomy, Science 318 (2007) 53–54.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
R. Dalton, D. Cyranoski, Baja peninsula claims five victims in tragic accident, Nature 404 (2000) 533.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
H.W. Ko, J. Jiang, I. Edery, Role for Slimb in the degradation of Drosophila Period protein phosphorylated by Doubletime, Nature 420 (2002) 673–678.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
J. Li, D. Stein, C. McMullan, D. Branton, M.J. Aziz, J.A. Golovchenko, Ion-beam sculpting at nanometre length scales, Nature 412 (2001) 166–169.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geotechni, K. Laackmann, H. Balthaus, O. Braach, W.-D. Friebel, A. Hettler, B. Maidl, M. Meissner, W. Schuck, S. Schwaiger, D. Stephan, M. Thewes, B. Wittke-Schmitt, Taschenbuch für den Tunnelbau 2015, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany, 2015.
An edited book
[1]
D.T. Gamage, ed., Professional Development for Leaders and Managers of Self-Governing Schools, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2006.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
J.G. Jacot, A.J. Raskin, J.H. Omens, A.D. McCulloch, L. Tung, Mechanostransduction in Cardiac and Stem-Cell Derived Cardiac Cells, in: A. Kamkin, I. Kiseleva (Eds.), Mechanosensitivity of the Heart, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2010: pp. 99–139.

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 The Crop Journal.

Blog post
[1]
E. Andrew, Cartwheeling Spider Discovered, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/cartwheeling-spider-discovered/ (accessed October 30, 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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, SEOG Funds: Information on the Distribution of SEOG Funds to Students, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1985.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
G.G. Gramajo, Guidance control of small UAV with energy and maneuverability limitations for a search and coverage mission, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2014.

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
[1]
J. Gavin, Politics, Passion and No Shirking on Practice, New York Times (2017) C7.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleThe Crop Journal
AbbreviationCrop J.
ISSN (print)2214-5141
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Plant Science

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