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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Marris E (2010) On high alert. Nature 466:S2-3

A journal article with 2 authors

Yu HK, Lee J-L (2014) Growth mechanism of metal-oxide nanowires synthesized by electron beam evaporation: a self-catalytic vapor-liquid-solid process. Sci Rep 4:6589

A journal article with 3 authors

Archibald JD, Averianov AO, Ekdale EG (2001) Late Cretaceous relatives of rabbits, rodents, and other extant eutherian mammals. Nature 414:62–65

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kanamaru S, Leiman PG, Kostyuchenko VA, et al (2002) Structure of the cell-puncturing device of bacteriophage T4. Nature 415:553–557

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Khan MM, Islam MR (2016) Zero Waste Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Bulte JWM, Modo MMJ (eds) (2008) Nanoparticles in Biomedical Imaging: Emerging Technologies and Applications. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Lewis ME, Werdelin L (2007) Patterns of change in the Plio-Pleistocene carnivorans of eastern Africa. In: Bobe R, Alemseged Z, Behrensmeyer AK (eds) Hominin Environments in the East African Pliocene: An Assessment of the Faunal Evidence. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 77–105

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

Fang J (2015) Ancient Supernova Mystery Discovered At The Bottom Of The Ocean. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/extraterrestrial-dust-found-ocean-floor-still-mystery/. 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 (1988) Factors Affecting Concentration in the Airline Industry. 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

So RJ (2010) Coolie democracy: U.S.-China political and literary exchange, 1925-1955. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University

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

Feeney K (2009) Where to Fill Up the Table. New York Times NJ13

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marris 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Marris 2010; Yu and Lee 2014).

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

Two authors: (Yu and Lee 2014)
Three or more authors: (Kanamaru et al. 2002)

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