How to format your references using the AAPS Open citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for AAPS Open. 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

Harte J (2008) An ecologist notes that important details are missing from climate-change models. Nature 454:1033

A journal article with 2 authors

Haiser HJ, Turnbaugh PJ (2012) Is it time for a metagenomic basis of therapeutics? Science 336:1253–1255

A journal article with 3 authors

Herr AB, Ballister ER, Bjorkman PJ (2003) Insights into IgA-mediated immune responses from the crystal structures of human FcalphaRI and its complex with IgA1-Fc. Nature 423:614–620

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Beeson TD, Mastracchio A, Hong J-B, et al (2007) Enantioselective organocatalysis using SOMO activation. Science 316:582–585

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lane MJ (2015) The Mission-Driven Venture. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Yin H (2016) Spatio-Temporal Recommendation in Social Media. Springer, Singapore

A chapter in an edited book

Mauroy B (2005) 3D Hydrodynamics in the Upper Human Bronchial Tree: Interplay between Geometry and Flow Distribution. In: Losa GA, Merlini D, Nonnenmacher TF, Weibel ER (eds) Fractals in Biology and Medicine. Birkhäuser, Basel, pp 43–53

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 AAPS Open.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2015) NASA Releases Astonishing GoPro Footage From Astronauts POV. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-astronaut-takes-gopro-footage-earth-his-pov/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1990) Problems Persist in Justice’s ADP Management and Organizations. 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

Harris DW (2012) An examination of the impact of computer-based animations and visualization sequence on student understanding of Hadley Cells in atmospheric circulation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Gustines GG (2016) The Illustrated Stories of Teenagers, Told With Humor and a Light Heart. New York Times B6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Harte 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Harte 2008; Haiser and Turnbaugh 2012).

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

Two authors: (Haiser and Turnbaugh 2012)
Three or more authors: (Beeson et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	AAPS Open
Abbreviation	AAPS Open
ISSN (online)	2364-9534
Scope