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

Lok C. Plans to reduce acceptable arsenic limit put on hold. Nature. 2001;410(6828):503.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peña JL, Konishi M. Auditory spatial receptive fields created by multiplication. Science. 2001;292(5515):249–252.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jop P, Forterre Y, Pouliquen O. A constitutive law for dense granular flows. Nature. 2006;441(7094):727–730.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ram RJ, Verberkmoes NC, Thelen MP, et al. Community proteomics of a natural microbial biofilm. Science. 2005;308(5730):1915–1920.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Graham AW, Kirkman NC, Paul PM. Mobile Radio Network Design in the VHF and UHF Bands. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

Toussaint L, Worthington E, Williams DR, eds. Forgiveness and Health: Scientific Evidence and Theories Relating Forgiveness to Better Health. 1st ed. 2015. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2015 X, 306 p. 8 illus., 1 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Sung K, Pavleas J, Arnez F, et al. Working with Textures, Sprites, and Fonts. In: Pavleas J, Arnez F, Pace J, eds. Build Your Own 2D Game Engine and Create Great Web Games: Using HTML5, JavaScript, and WebGL. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2015:127–185.

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

Andrews R. Mechanical Sea Snakes Could Be The Terrifying Future Of Underwater Exploration. IFLScience. 2016;(https://www.iflscience.com/technology/mechanical-sea-snakes-could-be-there-future-underwater-explanation/). (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. Need To Improve Administration of Fees and Charges of Regulatory Agencies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1970.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McIlwain CJ. Defense Institutional Building - Integrating the Work [Doctoral dissertation]. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College Park; 2017.

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

George N. Red and Black. New York Times. 2013;BR12.

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