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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Science (AJS). 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

Mollenauer, L. F., 2003, Physics. Nonlinear optics in fibers: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 302, p. 996–997.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bays, P. M., and Husain, M., 2008, Dynamic shifts of limited working memory resources in human vision: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 321, p. 851–854.

A journal article with 3 authors

Storch, D., Keil, P., and Jetz, W., 2012, Universal species-area and endemics-area relationships at continental scales: Nature, v. 488, p. 78–81.

A journal article with 15 or more authors

Walsh, D. A., Zaikova, E., Howes, C. G., Song, Y. C., Wright, J. J., Tringe, S. G., Tortell, P. D., and Hallam, S. J., 2009, Metagenome of a versatile chemolithoautotroph from expanding oceanic dead zones: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 326, p. 578–582.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vagelli, A. A., 2011, The Banggai Cardinalfish: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Gulati, R. D., Lammens, E., Pauw, N. D., and Donk, E. V., editors, 2007, Shallow Lakes in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Shallow Lakes, held at Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 5–9 June 2005: Developments in Hydrobiology, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, VIII, 466 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Ryabov, V. V., Shevko, A. Y., and Gora, M. P., 2014, Mineralogy and Geochemistry of Traps, in Shevko, A. Y. and Gora, M. P. eds., Trap Magmatism and Ore Formation in the Siberian Noril’sk Region: Volume 1. Trap Petrology: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, p. 207–273.

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 Science.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014, Doctors Use 3D-Printed Replica Brains To Guide Life-Changing Pediatric Surgery, accessed October 30, 2018, at IFLScience at https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/doctors-use-3d-printed-replica-brains-guide-life-changing-pediatric-surgery/.

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, 1973, Protest of Air Force Contract Award: U.S. Government Printing Office B-177968.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

O’Connor, C. S., 2015, Measurement of Dispersion and Attenuation in Granular Media using a Filter-Correlation Method:

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

Eligon, J., 2017, A Black-and-White Issue: New York Times, p. AR1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mollenauer, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Bays and Husain, 2008; Mollenauer, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Bays and Husain, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Walsh and others, 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Science
Abbreviation	Am. J. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0002-9599
ISSN (online)	1945-452x
Scope	General Earth and Planetary Sciences