How to format your references using the Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological 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

Meyer, E. (2015). Science 348, 1089.

A journal article with 2 authors

Roberts, L. & Jasny, B. (2008). Science 321, 511.

A journal article with 3 authors

Elia, A. E. H., Cantley, L. C. & Yaffe, M. B. (2003). Science 299, 1228–1231.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ash, C., Jasny, B. R., Roberts, L., Stone, R. & Sugden, A. M. (2008). Science 319, 739.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bayuk, J. L., Healey, J., Rohmeyer, P., Sachs, M. H., Schmidt, J. & Weiss, J. (2012). Cyber Security Policy Guidebook Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lemieux, V. L. (2016). Building Trust in Information: Perspectives on the Frontiers of Provenance Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Nešetřil, J. & de Mendez, P. O. (2012). Vol. Sparsity: Graphs, Structures, and Algorithms, edited by P. Ossona de Mendez. pp. 89–114. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 D: Biological Crystallography.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015). IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/physics/how-survive-real-life-fallout/.

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 (1971). Activities of the Research and Development Center - Thailand, Advanced Research Projects Agency 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

Paulone, S. (2013). Mergers and Acquisitions: Examining Managerial Strategy Connection to Post Transaction Accounting Measures. Doctoral dissertation. Northcentral 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

Hodgman, J. (2017). New York Times MM24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Meyer, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Meyer, 2015; Roberts & Jasny, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Roberts & Jasny, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Ash et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography
Abbreviation	Acta Crystallogr. D Biol. Crystallogr.
ISSN (online)	1399-0047
Scope	Structural Biology General Medicine