How to format your references using the Amino Acids citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Amino Acids. 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

Schiermeier Q (2003) Deep-sea sub aims to get to the bottom of a muddy issue. Nature 423:469

A journal article with 2 authors

Foster DJ, Wilson MA (2006) Reverse replay of behavioural sequences in hippocampal place cells during the awake state. Nature 440:680–683

A journal article with 3 authors

Wood BJ, Halliday AN, Rehkämper M (2010) Volatile accretion history of the Earth. Nature 467:E6-7

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Gros J, Feistel K, Viebahn C, et al (2009) Cell movements at Hensen’s node establish left/right asymmetric gene expression in the chick. Science 324:941–944

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gottlieb I (2009) Next Generation Excel. John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd., 2 Clementi Loop, #02-01, Singapore 129809

An edited book

Thauer CR, Wendt C (eds) (2016) Thucydides and Political Order: Concepts of Order and the History of the Peloponnesian War. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Liao I-C, Deng Y-S, You H-C (2016) The Emotion and Personality User Perception in Multi-screen Interaction. In: Marcus A (ed) Design, User Experience, and Usability: Novel User Experiences: 5th International Conference, DUXU 2016, Held as Part of HCI International 2016, Toronto, Canada, July 17–22, 2016, Proceedings, Part II. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 34–45

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 Amino Acids.

Blog post

Andrews R (2016) Two Faults Beneath California Are Connected In A Destructive Embrace. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/two-faults-beneath-san-francisco-connected-destructve-embrace/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2016) Vehicle Cybersecurity: DOT and Industry Have Efforts Under Way, but DOT Needs to Define Its Role in Responding to a Real-world Attack. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bennett MA (2017) The Underrepresentation of Registered Nurses in Hospital CEO Positions: A Grounded Theory Study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Hanc J (2017) Skills-Gap Fixes. New York Times F4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schiermeier 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Schiermeier 2003; Foster and Wilson 2006).

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

Two authors: (Foster and Wilson 2006)
Three or more authors: (Gros et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Amino Acids
Abbreviation	Amino Acids
ISSN (print)	0939-4451
ISSN (online)	1438-2199
Scope	Biochemistry Clinical Biochemistry Organic Chemistry