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

Fratzl, P., 2014, Applied physics: The virtues of tiling: Nature, v. 516, p. 178–179.

A journal article with 2 authors

Karki, B. B., and Stixrude, L. P., 2010, Viscosity of MgSiO3 liquid at Earth’s mantle conditions: implications for an early magma ocean: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 328, p. 740–742.

A journal article with 3 authors

Trillo, S., Gongora, J. S. T., and Fratalocchi, A., 2014, Wave instabilities in the presence of non vanishing background in nonlinear Schrödinger systems: Scientific reports, v. 4, p. 7285.

A journal article with 15 or more authors

Zollikofer, C. P. E., Ponce de León, M. S., Lieberman, D. E., Guy, F., Pilbeam, D., Likius, A., Mackaye, H. T., Vignaud, P., and Brunet, M., 2005, Virtual cranial reconstruction of Sahelanthropus tchadensis: Nature, v. 434, p. 755–759.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Voit, B., Haag, R., Appelhans, D., and Welzel, P. B., 2016, Bio- and Multifunctional Polymer Architectures: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Aspray, W., 2014, Formal and Informal Approaches to Food Policy (G. Royer & M. G. Ocepek, Eds.): SpringerBriefs in Food, Health, and Nutrition, Springer International Publishing, Cham, VIII, 137 p. 9 illus., 1 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Seidl, C., Pogorelskiy, K., and Traub, S., 2013, Uniform Measures, in Pogorelskiy, K. and Traub, S. eds., Tax Progression in OECD Countries: An Integrative Analysis of Tax Schedules and Income Distributions: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, p. 27–68.

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., 2016, Seven Hard Facts We All Need To Swallow About Antibiotics, accessed October 30, 2018, at IFLScience at https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/seven-hard-facts-we-all-need-swallow-about-antibiotics/.

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, 2003, Maritime Administration: Weaknesses Identified in Management of the Title XI Loan Guarantee Program: U.S. Government Printing Office GAO-03-728T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Pei, X., 2008, Acid modification of psyllium:

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

Kelly, C., 2012, Dallas Has Its Own Indie Film Scene, and a Festival: New York Times, p. A25B.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fratzl, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Fratzl, 2014; Karki and Stixrude, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Karki and Stixrude, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Zollikofer and others, 2005)

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