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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Bullock, R. M. (2013). Science 342, 1054–1055.
A journal article with 2 authors
Feldl, N. & Bilham, R. (2006). Nature 444, 165–170.
A journal article with 3 authors
Allen, M., Raper, S. & Mitchell, J. (2001). Science 293, 430–433.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Panda, S. K., Dasgupta, I., Şaşıoğlu, E., Blügel, S. & Sarma, D. D. (2013). Sci. Rep. 3, 2995.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Morvillo, N. (2010). Science and Religion Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
An edited book
DeJaeghere, J. G., Josić, J. & McCleary, K. S. (2016). Education and Youth Agency: Qualitative Case Studies in Global Contexts Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Pappenheimer, W. (2008). Vol. Transdisciplinary Digital Art. Sound, Vision and the New Screen: Digital Art Weeks and Interactive Futures 2006/2007, Zurich, Switzerland and Victoria, BC, Canada. Selected Papers, edited by R. Adams, S. Gibson & S. M. Arisona. pp. 33–45. 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 F: Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014). IFLScience.

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 (1996). Scientific Research: Continued Vigilance Critical to Protecting Human Subjects 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
Basik, N. (2008). An evolutionary approach to intuitionism and moral realism. Doctoral dissertation. Indiana 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
Sisario, B. (2017). New York Times C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bullock, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Bullock, 2013; Feldl & Bilham, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Feldl & Bilham, 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (Panda et al., 2013)

About the journal

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

Other styles