How to format your references using the Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances. 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

Chen, J. (2001). Nature 410, 31.

A journal article with 2 authors

Stagon, S. P. & Huang, H. (2013). Sci. Rep. 3, 3066.

A journal article with 3 authors

Saikia, A., Frost, D. J. & Rubie, D. C. (2008). Science 319, 1515–1518.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jansen, C. A., de Geus, E. D., van Haarlem, D. A., van de Haar, P. M., Löndt, B. Z., Graham, S. P., Göbel, T. W., van Eden, W., Brookes, S. M. & Vervelde, L. (2013). Sci. Rep. 3, 2478.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Richards, S. A. & Hollerton, J. C. (2010). Essential Practical NMR for Organic Chemistry Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Cao, L. (2010). Domain Driven Data Mining Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

da Silva, V. A. (2012). Vol. Translocal Ruralism: Mobility and Connectivity in European Rural Spaces, edited by C. Hedberg & R. M. do Carmo. pp. 73–86. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014). IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-do-dolphins-and-whales-still-have-pelvic-bones-please-ladies/.

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 (1983). Federal Communications Commission Can Further Improve Its Licensing Activities 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

Jin, H. (2014). Periodic Motions and Bifurcation Tree in a Periodically Excited Duffing Oscillator with Time-delay. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois 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

Vecsey, G. (2010). New York Times B18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chen, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Chen, 2001; Stagon & Huang, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Stagon & Huang, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Jansen et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances
Abbreviation	Acta Crystallogr. A Found. Adv.
ISSN (online)	2053-2733
Scope	Biochemistry Structural Biology Inorganic Chemistry Physical and Theoretical Chemistry General Materials Science Condensed Matter Physics