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

Zeilinger A (2000) The quantum centennial. Nature 408:639–641

A journal article with 2 authors

Jakosky BM, Phillips RJ (2001) Mars’ volatile and climate history. Nature 412:237–244

A journal article with 3 authors

Innes C, Anand M, Bauch CT (2013) The impact of human-environment interactions on the stability of forest-grassland mosaic ecosystems. Sci Rep 3:2689

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Koleilat GI, Kramer IJ, Wong CTO, et al (2013) Folded-light-path colloidal quantum dot solar cells. Sci Rep 3:2166

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wildi O (2010) Data Analysis in Vegetation Ecology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Cebeci T (2005) Modeling and Computation of Boundary-Layer Flows: Laminar, Turbulent and Transitional Boundary Layers in Incompressible and Compressible Flows, Second Revised and Extended Edition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Moos M-K, Bennett AC (2011) Preconceptional Health Promotion. In: Handler A, Kennelly J, Peacock N (eds) Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes: The Evidence from Population-Based Interventions. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 65–92

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

Hale T (2016) These Scientists Think “Hexagonal Clouds” Could Explain The Bermuda Triangle. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/these-scientists-think-hexagonal-clouds-could-explain-the-bermuda-triangle/. 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 (2010) NASA: Assessments of Selected Large-Scale Projects. 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

McFarland-Mancini M (2006) Prolactin Production by Human Breast Adipose Tissue and Adipocytes. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati

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

Murphy MJO, Schuessler J (2013) Jane, Plain No More: A Year of Austen Glamour. New York Times C28

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zeilinger 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Zeilinger 2000; Jakosky and Phillips 2001).

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

Two authors: (Jakosky and Phillips 2001)
Three or more authors: (Koleilat et al. 2013)

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

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