How to format your references using the Acta Crystallographica Section F: Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Crystallographica Section F: Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications. 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

Lee, P. H. (2014). Sci. Rep. 4, 6085.

A journal article with 2 authors

Helms Cahan, S. & Keller, L. (2003). Nature 424, 306–309.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gómez-Llobregat, J., Buceta, J. & Reigada, R. (2013). Sci. Rep. 3, 2608.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chang, C., Wu, M., He, D., Pei, Y., Wu, C.-F., Wu, X., Yu, H., Zhu, F., Wang, K., Chen, Y., Huang, L., Li, J.-F., He, J. & Zhao, L.-D. (2018). Science 360, 778–783.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

E. Sutherland, P. (2014). Principles of Electrical Safety Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Navratil, G. (2009). Research Trends in Geographic Information Science Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Forciea, M. A. & Yudin, J. (2008). Vol. Classic Papers in Geriatric Medicine with Current Commentaries, edited by R. J. Pignolo, M. K. Crane & M. A. Forciea. pp. 27–32. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

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 F: Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2016). IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-eyespots-showed-up-on-butterfly-wings/.

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 (2013). Transportation-Disadvantaged Populations: Coordination Efforts are Underway, but Challenges Continue 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

Newsome, G. A. (2009). Novel instrumentation and method development for a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer. Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina.

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 B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lee, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Lee, 2014; Helms Cahan & Keller, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Helms Cahan & Keller, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Chang et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Crystallographica Section F: Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications
ISSN (online)	1744-3091
Scope