How to format your references using the AMBIO citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for AMBIO. 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

Pertsev, N. A. 2013. Origin of easy magnetization switching in magnetic tunnel junctions with voltage-controlled interfacial anisotropy. Scientific reports 3: 2757.

A journal article with 2 authors

Eberl, G., and D. R. Littman. 2004. Thymic origin of intestinal alphabeta T cells revealed by fate mapping of RORgammat+ cells. Science (New York, N.Y.) 305: 248–251.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jefferis, G. S. X. E., T. Komiyama, and L. Luo. 2004. Neuroscience. Calcium and CREST for healthy dendrites. Science (New York, N.Y.) 303: 179–181.

A journal article with 9 or more authors

Nam, K.-H., N. Jamilpour, E. Mfoumou, F.-Y. Wang, D. D. Zhang, and P. K. Wong. 2014. Probing mechanoregulation of neuronal differentiation by plasma lithography patterned elastomeric substrates. Scientific reports 4: 6965.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vegh, A. 2010. Web Development with the Mac®. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Allpress, B., R. Barnacle, L. Duxbury, and E. Grierson, ed. 2012. Supervising Practices for Postgraduate Research in Art, Architecture and Design. Vol. 57. Educational Futures, Rethinking Theory and Practice. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

A chapter in an edited book

Capasso, V., and D. Morale. 2013. A Multiscale Approach Leading to Hybrid Mathematical Models for Angiogenesis: The Role of Randomness. In Mathematical Methods and Models in Biomedicine, ed. U. Ledzewicz, H. Schättler, A. Friedman, and E. Kashdan, 87–115. Lecture Notes on Mathematical Modelling in the Life Sciences. New York, NY: 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 AMBIO.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015. The Eye-Opening Parasite That Can Get In Through Your Contact Lens. IFLScience. IFLScience. May 26.

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. 2009. Higher Education and Disability: Education Needs a Coordinated Approach to Improve Its Assistance to Schools in Supporting Students. GAO-10-33. 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, College Park, MD: 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

Billard, M. 2010. The Game and the Shoe. New York Times, August 12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pertsev 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Eberl and Littman 2004; Pertsev 2013).

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

Two authors: (Eberl and Littman 2004)
Three or more authors: (Nam et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	AMBIO
Abbreviation	Ambio
ISSN (print)	0044-7447
ISSN (online)	1654-7209
Scope	Ecology Environmental Chemistry General Medicine Geography, Planning and Development