How to format your references using the Atoms citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Atoms. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Rothemund, P.W.K. Folding DNA to Create Nanoscale Shapes and Patterns. Nature 2006, 440, 297–302.

A journal article with 2 authors

Istvan, E.S.; Deisenhofer, J. Structural Mechanism for Statin Inhibition of HMG-CoA Reductase. Science 2001, 292, 1160–1164.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shapiro, L.; McAdams, H.H.; Losick, R. Why and How Bacteria Localize Proteins. Science 2009, 326, 1225–1228.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Perry, L.; Sandweiss, D.H.; Piperno, D.R.; Rademaker, K.; Malpass, M.A.; Umire, A.; de la Vera, P. Early Maize Agriculture and Interzonal Interaction in Southern Peru. Nature 2006, 440, 76–79.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety Guidelines for Use of Vapor Cloud Dispersion Models; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 1996; ISBN 9780470935071.

An edited book

Integrated Water Resources Management in the Mediterranean Region: Dialogue towards New Strategy; Choukr-Allah, R., Ragab, R., Rodriguez-Clemente, R., Eds.; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2012; ISBN 9789400747555.

A chapter in an edited book

Gupta, G.; Singh, J.; Pandey, P.C.; Tomar, V.; Rani, M.; Kumar, P. Geospatial Strategy for Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon in Tropical Wildlife Reserve. In Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental Research; Srivastava, P.K., Mukherjee, S., Gupta, M., Islam, T., Eds.; Society of Earth Scientists Series; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2014; pp. 69–83 ISBN 9783319059051.

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 Atoms.

Blog post

Andrews, R. Millions Of Penguins Are About To Be Smothered By A Volcanic Eruption Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/millions-penguins-smothered-volcanic-eruption/ (accessed on 30 October 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 Highway Safety: Monitoring Practices To Show Compliance With Speed Limits Should Be Reexamined; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1988;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Carrillo, J. Parenting Education Curriculum for Single Adolescent Mothers in Foster Care. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2010.

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

Berkman, S. A Beauty of a Pitchers’ Duel? Try an Ugly Slugfest. New York Times 2017, D5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Atoms
Abbreviation	Atoms
ISSN (online)	2218-2004
Scope