How to format your references using the The Journal of Agricultural Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Agricultural Science. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Russo, E. (2004). Bricks and mortar. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Nature, 431, 882.
A journal article with 2 authors
Buckling, A. & Rainey, P.B. (2002). The role of parasites in sympatric and allopatric host diversification. Nature, 420, 496–499.
A journal article with 3 authors
Li, J., An, J. & Ting, C.S. (2013). Interaction-induced localization of mobile impurities in ultracold systems. Scientific reports, 3, 3147.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Pang, W.-W., Zhang, P., Zhang, G.-C., Xu, A.-G. & Zhao, X.-G. (2014). Nucleation and growth mechanisms of hcp domains in compressed iron. Scientific reports, 4, 5273.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Marti, P. (2013). Theory of Structures. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Carbone, A., Palleschi, G., Pastore, A.L. & Messas, A. (eds). (2016). Functional Urologic Surgery in Neurogenic and Oncologic Diseases: Role of Advanced Minimally Invasive Surgery. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Bredereck, R., Froese, V., Hartung, S., Nichterlein, A., Niedermeier, R. & Talmon, N. (2014). The Complexity of Degree Anonymization by Vertex Addition. In Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management: 10th International Conference, AAIM 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 8-11, 2014. Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science. (Eds Q. Gu, P. Hell, & B. Yang), pp. 44–55. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Journal of Agricultural Science.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2013). T.Rex’s Relative Was The “King of Gore”, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/trex’s-relative-was-“king-gore”/

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. (1993). Telecommunications: FCC’s Oversight Efforts to Control Cross-Subsidization. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Hawkins, J.T. (2017). A Private Solution to a Public Problem: Managing Hydraulic Fracturing Risks by Enhancing Private Governance through Mandatory Insurance Requirements. Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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. (2006). Plan Would Consolidate Some Hospitals on Island. New York Times, LI7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Russo 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Buckling & Rainey 2002; Russo 2004).

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

  • Two authors: (Buckling & Rainey 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Pang et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleThe Journal of Agricultural Science
AbbreviationJ. Agric. Sci.
ISSN (print)0021-8596
ISSN (online)1469-5146
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Animal Science and Zoology
Genetics

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