How to format your references using the American Entomologist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Entomologist. 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	Download the output style file
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

Dickson JAD. 2002. Fossil echinoderms as monitor of the Mg/Ca ratio of Phanerozoic oceans. Science. 298(5596):1222–1224.

A journal article with 2 authors

Campbell IH, O’Neill HSC. 2012. Evidence against a chondritic Earth. Nature. 483(7391):553–558.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bayley PJ, Frascino JC, Squire LR. 2005. Robust habit learning in the absence of awareness and independent of the medial temporal lobe. Nature. 436(7050):550–553.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Stensmyr MC, Urru I, Collu I, et al. 2002. Pollination: Rotting smell of dead-horse arum florets. Nature. 420(6916):625–626.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Walker C, Fincham B. 2011. Work and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Bartolo BD, Collins J, editors. 2011. Biophotonics: Spectroscopy, Imaging, Sensing, and Manipulation. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands (NATO Science for Peace and Security Series B: Physics and Biophysics). XVI, 434 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Mason A, Shaw A, Al-Shamma’a AI. 2010. Inventory Management in the Packaged Gas Industry Using Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Mukhopadhyay SC, Leung H, editors. Advances in Wireless Sensors and Sensor Networks. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering). p. 75–100.

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 American Entomologist.

Blog post

Taub B. 2016 May 10. “Cuckoo Mafia” Goes After Victims’ Families. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/avian-mafia-goes-after-victims-families/.

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. 1989. Highway Contracts: Federal-Aid Highway Contracts Awarded to Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office Report No.: RCED-89-78.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Wang S. 2017. Experimental Investigations of the Critical Flowback Velocity for Various Types of Proppant in Hydraulic-Fracturing Fluids with Different Viscosities [Doctoral dissertation]. Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana.

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

Brantley B. 2017 Jul 24. The Surveillance State of Denmark. New York Times.:C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dickson, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Dickson, 2002; Campbell and O’Neill, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Campbell and O’Neill, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Stensmyr et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Entomologist
Abbreviation	Am. Entomol.
ISSN (print)	1046-2821
Scope