How to format your references using the Transactions of the ASABE citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Transactions of the ASABE. 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

Mackinnon, R. (2005). Structural biology. Membrane protein insertion and stability. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5714), 1425–1426.

A journal article with 2 authors

Park, J., Yook, S.-H. (2014). Bayesian inference of natural rankings in incomplete competition networks. Scientific Reports, 4, 6212.

A journal article with 3 authors

Patterson, D., Schnell, M., Doyle, J. M. (2013). Enantiomer-specific detection of chiral molecules via microwave spectroscopy. Nature, 497(7450), 475–477.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Chen, D., Pacal, M., Wenzel, P., Knoepfler, P. S., Leone, G., Bremner, R. (2009). Division and apoptosis of E2f-deficient retinal progenitors. Nature, 462(7275), 925–929.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Goshtasby, A. A. (2017). Theory and Applications of Image Registration. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Baglioni, P. (2015). Nanotechnologies in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage: A compendium of materials and techniques. (D. Chelazzi & R. Giorgi, Eds.). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

McComas, W. F. (2014). Advance Organizers. In W. F. McComas (Ed.), The Language of Science Education: An Expanded Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts in Science Teaching and Learning (pp. 4–4). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 Transactions of the ASABE.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, May 14). Hovercraft Coming To Market in 2017. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from

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. (1990). Air Force ADP Procurement: Contracting and Market Share Information (No. IMTEC-90-35FS). 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

Karyekar, M. (2014). Translating observation into narration: The “sentimental” anthropology of Georg Forster (1754-1794) (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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

Paulson, M., Sisario, B. (2017, February 12). Hit Shows on Two Continents Confront One Villain: Scalpers. New York Times, p. A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mackinnon, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Mackinnon, 2005; Park and Yook, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Park and Yook, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Chen et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Transactions of the ASABE
Abbreviation	Trans. ASABE
ISSN (print)	2151-0032
ISSN (online)	2151-0040
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Food Science Forestry Soil Science Biomedical Engineering

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