How to format your references using the American Journal of Epidemiology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Epidemiology. 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

Cottrell GW. Computer science. New life for neural networks. Science. 2006;313(5786):454–455.

A journal article with 2 authors

Piotrowska K, Zernicka-Goetz M. Role for sperm in spatial patterning of the early mouse embryo. Nature. 2001;409(6819):517–521.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zikherman J, Parameswaran R, Weiss A. Endogenous antigen tunes the responsiveness of naive B cells but not T cells. Nature. 2012;489(7414):160–164.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chaudhry A, Rudra D, Treuting P, et al. CD4+ regulatory T cells control TH17 responses in a Stat3-dependent manner. Science. 2009;326(5955):986–991.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tang C. The Data Industry: The Business and Economics of Information and Big Data. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.

An edited book

Trobaugh JJ. Winning LEGO MINDSTORMS Programming. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2012 XXII, 252 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Thali M. The Roles of Tetraspanins in HIV-1 Replication. In: Spearman P, Freed EO, eds. HIV Interactions with Host Cell Proteins. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009:85–102.

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 Journal of Epidemiology.

Blog post

Fang J. Top Predators Limit Their Own Numbers. IFLScience. 2015;(https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/top-predators-limit-their-own-numbers/). (Accessed October 30, 2018)

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. Intercity Passenger Rail: National Policy and Strategies Needed to Maximize Public Benefits from Federal Expenditures. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bankapura S. Packet adaptive routing in communication network [Doctoral dissertation]. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach; 2016.

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

Hodara S. Contrasting Art and Creating Dialogue. New York Times. 2015;CT10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Epidemiology
Abbreviation	Am. J. Epidemiol.
ISSN (print)	0002-9262
ISSN (online)	1476-6256
Scope	Epidemiology