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

Eisner JA (2007) Water vapour and hydrogen in the terrestrial-planet-forming region of a protoplanetary disk. Nature 447:562–564

A journal article with 2 authors

Mohd-Sarip A, Verrijzer CP (2004) Molecular biology. A higher order of silence. Science 306:1484–1485

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang Q, He K, Huo H (2012) Policy: Cleaning China’s air. Nature 484:161–162

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Leopold AC, Jaffe MJ, Brokaw CJ, Goebel G (2000) Many modes of movement. Science 288:2131e–2e

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Caferro W (2010) Contesting the Renaissance. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Choi Y (ed) (2013) Osteoimmunology: Interactions of the Immune and Skeletal Systems. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

McLean JM, Athwal GS, Daneshvar P (2016) Reconstruction Techniques for Fractures of the Proximal Ulna and Radial Head. In: Antuña S, Barco R (eds) Essential Techniques in Elbow Surgery. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 59–86

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

Luntz S (2016) Lonely Planets Have Crazier Orbits Than Worlds With Companions. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/lonely-planets-have-crazier-orbits-than-worlds-with-companions/. 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 (1999) Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Estimated Costs, Planned Uses of Emergency Funding, and Future Implications. 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

Hylton JK (2016) Scatter; Or, A Series or Minor Inconveniences. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana

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

Isherwood C (2015) Sigh No More; Let’s Twist and Shout. New York Times C1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Eisner 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Mohd-Sarip and Verrijzer 2004; Eisner 2007).

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

Two authors: (Mohd-Sarip and Verrijzer 2004)
Three or more authors: (Leopold et al. 2000)

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