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

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

1. Brower, V. (2011). Biomarkers: Portents of malignancy. Nature 471, S19-21.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Wilkinson, K., and Hershko, A. (2015). Irwin Allan Rose (1926-2015). Nature 523, 532.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Cao, A., Romanowicz, B., and Takeuchi, N. (2005). An observation of PKJKP: inferences on inner core shear properties. Science 308, 1453–1455.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

1. Kim, J.-M., Jang, H.-J., Choi, S.Y., Park, S.-A., Kim, I.S., Yang, Y.R., Lee, Y.H., Ryu, S.H., and Suh, P.-G. (2014). DJ-1 contributes to adipogenesis and obesity-induced inflammation. Sci. Rep. 4, 4805.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Love, J., and Bryant, J.A. (2017). Biofuels and Bioenergy (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd).

An edited book

1. Marinca, V. (2015). The Optimal Homotopy Asymptotic Method: Engineering Applications (Cham: Springer International Publishing).

A chapter in an edited book

1. Cavalieri, F.J., Brüls, O., and Cardona, A. (2014). A Mortar Method Combined with an Augmented Lagrangian Approach for Treatment of Mechanical Contact Problems. In Multibody Dynamics: Computational Methods and Applications, Z. Terze, ed. (Cham: Springer International Publishing), pp. 69–91.

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 Human Genetics.

Blog post

1. Andrew, D. (2016). From Living Computers To Nano-Robots: How We’re Taking DNA Beyond Genetics (IFLScience).

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

1. Government Accountability Office (1988). Airspace Use: Status of Proposals To Expand Special Use Airspace in North Carolina (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

1. Gobas, M. (2012). Affiliate users policy: Solution to multiple ball field users in the city of Artesia. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach.

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

1. Kelly, R.W. (2007). Washington’s Secret Gun Files. New York Times A13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Human Genetics
Abbreviation	Am. J. Hum. Genet.
ISSN (print)	0002-9297
ISSN (online)	1537-6605
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)