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

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

Davidson AL. Structural biology. Not just another ABC transporter. Science. 2002;296(5570):1038-1040.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fox BW, Tibbetts RS. Neurodegeneration: Problems at the nuclear pore. Nature. 2015;525(7567):36-37.

A journal article with 3 authors

Allen AP, Brown JH, Gillooly JF. Global biodiversity, biochemical kinetics, and the energetic-equivalence rule. Science. 2002;297(5586):1545-1548.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

McCulloch M, Fallon S, Wyndham T, Hendy E, Lough J, Barnes D. Coral record of increased sediment flux to the inner Great Barrier Reef since European settlement. Nature. 2003;421(6924):727-730.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

O’Neil PV. Beginning Partial Differential Equations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Montavon G, Orr GB, Müller KR, eds. Neural Networks: Tricks of the Trade: Second Edition. Vol 7700. Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Hairer E, Wanner G. Calculus in Several Variables. In: Hairer E, Wanner G, eds. Analysis by Its History. Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics. Springer; 2008:271-350.

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 Public Health.

Blog post

Andrew E. Enormous Centipede Spotted in Texas. IFLScience. Published July 7, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/huge-centipede-found-garner-state-park-texas/

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. Information Technology: Foundational Steps Being Taken to Make Needed FBI Systems Modernization Management Improvements. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Wilson RA. Spectroelectrochemical Sensing and Detection of Zinc in Serum by Anodic Stripping Voltammerty on a Bismuth Film Electrode. Doctoral dissertation. University of Cincinnati; 2011.

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

Saslow L. The Week; Lowe’s Completes Deal To Buy Catering Hall. New York Times. July 8, 2007:14LI2.

In-text citations

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

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 Public Health
Abbreviation	Am. J. Public Health
ISSN (print)	0090-0036
ISSN (online)	1541-0048
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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