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

Albrecht, M. 2009. Chemistry. Carbenes in action. Science (New York, N.Y.) 326: 532–533.

A journal article with 2 authors

Chaudhari, K., and T. Pradeep. 2014. Spatiotemporal mapping of three dimensional rotational dynamics of single ultrasmall gold nanorods. Scientific reports 4: 5948.

A journal article with 3 authors

Young, B. A., T. M. Gruber, and C. A. Gross. 2004. Minimal machinery of RNA polymerase holoenzyme sufficient for promoter melting. Science (New York, N.Y.) 303: 1382–1384.

A journal article with 9 or more authors

Wang, H., L. Wang, H. Erdjument-Bromage, M. Vidal, P. Tempst, R. S. Jones, and Y. Zhang. 2004. Role of histone H2A ubiquitination in Polycomb silencing. Nature 431: 873–878.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Edmonds, M. E., A. V. M. Foster, and L. J. Sanders. 2008. A Practical Manual of Diabetic Foot Care. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

An edited book

Korin, M. R., ed. 2016. Health Promotion for Children and Adolescents. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Looi, C.-K., D. Sun, and W. Xie. 2016. Design for Linking Science Learning to the Informal Spaces. In ICT in Education in Global Context: Comparative Reports of Innovations in K-12 Education, ed. R. Huang, Kinshuk, and J. K. Price, 75–94. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. 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 AMBIO.

Blog post

Andrew, D. 2015. Check Out This Gorilla’s Reaction To Seeing Other Gorillas On A Smartphone. IFLScience. IFLScience. September 16.

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. 1978. Inadequacies in Data Processing Planning in the Department of the Interior. FGMSD-78-41. 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

Nelson, A. F. 2014. Anxiety in the process of individuation. An in-depth psychological study. Doctoral dissertation, Carpinteria, CA: Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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

Williams, J. 2017. Looking at, and Beyond, a Lifetime of Anxiety. New York Times, May 21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Albrecht 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Albrecht 2009; Chaudhari and Pradeep 2014).

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

Two authors: (Chaudhari and Pradeep 2014)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al. 2004)

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