How to format your references using the Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations of Crystallography citation style

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

Garrett, W. S. (2015). Science 348, 80–86.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sharp, M. D. & Pogliano, K. (2002). Science 295, 137–139.

A journal article with 3 authors

Durniak, K. J., Bailey, S. & Steitz, T. A. (2008). Science 322, 553–557.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Metallo, C. M., Gameiro, P. A., Bell, E. L., Mattaini, K. R., Yang, J., Hiller, K., Jewell, C. M., Johnson, Z. R., Irvine, D. J., Guarente, L., Kelleher, J. K., Vander Heiden, M. G., Iliopoulos, O. & Stephanopoulos, G. (2011). Nature 481, 380–384.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gray, D. F. & Malone, S. W. (2008). Macrofinancial Risk Analysis Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Reza Rezaie, H. (2015). Biomaterials and Their Applications Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Yunus, A. P., Dou, J., Avtar, R. & Narayana, A. C. (2016). Vol. Tsunamis and Earthquakes in Coastal Environments: Significance and Restoration, edited by V. Santiago-Fandiño, H. Tanaka & M. Spiske. pp. 65–77. 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 Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations of Crystallography.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2016). IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/environment/hms-terror-rediscovered-170-years-after-illfated-northwest-passage-attempt/.

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 (1995). School Finance: Trends in U.S. Education Spending 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

Armani, M. D. (2010). Nucleic acid extraction and detection across two-dimensional tissue samples. 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

Walsh, M. W. (2013). New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Garrett, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Garrett, 2015; Sharp & Pogliano, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Sharp & Pogliano, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Metallo et al., 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations of Crystallography
ISSN (print)	0108-7673
ISSN (online)	1600-5724
Scope