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

Hahn, R. 2013. Ronald Harry Coase (1910-2013). Nature 502: 449.

A journal article with 2 authors

Singleton, A. B., and B. J. Traynor. 2015. Genetics. For complex disease genetics, collaboration drives progress. Science (New York, N.Y.) 347: 1422–1423.

A journal article with 3 authors

Seto, K. C., R. K. Kaufmann, and C. E. Woodcock. 2000. Landsat reveals China’s farmland reserves, but they’re vanishing fast. Nature 406: 121.

A journal article with 9 or more authors

Reich, D., R. E. Green, M. Kircher, J. Krause, N. Patterson, E. Y. Durand, B. Viola, A. W. Briggs, et al. 2010. Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature 468: 1053–1060.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Batten, L. M. 2013. Public Key Cryptography. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kearley, G. J., and V. K. Peterson, ed. 2015. Neutron Applications in Materials for Energy. Neutron Scattering Applications and Techniques. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Bugge, K.-E., B. O’Gorman, I. Hill, and F. Welter. 2010. Regional Sustainability, Innovation and Welfare Through an Adaptive Process Model. In Facilitating Sustainable Innovation through Collaboration: A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective, ed. J. Sarkis, J. J. Cordeiro, and D. Vazquez Brust, 77–96. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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

Hamilton, K. 2017. 10 Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew. IFLScience. IFLScience. April 3.

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. 2005. Commercial Aviation: Bankruptcy and Pension Problems Are Symptoms of Underlying Structural Issues. GAO-05-945. 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

Holmberg, M. B. 2014. Alternative nitrogen for subsequent southern switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) production using cool-season legumes. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State 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

Lee, L. 2013. Art You Can Live With. New York Times, October 24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hahn 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Hahn 2013; Singleton and Traynor 2015).

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

Two authors: (Singleton and Traynor 2015)
Three or more authors: (Reich et al. 2010)

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