How to format your references using the The AAPS Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The AAPS Journal. 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

1. Fuller W. Who said “helix”? Nature. 2003;424:876–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Allen D, Westerblad H. Physiology. Lactic acid--the latest performance-enhancing drug. Science. 2004;305:1112–3.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Levine DI, Toffel MW, Johnson MS. Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss. Science. 2012;336:907–11.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Feng S, Chen H, Liu Y, Huang Z, Sun X, Zhou L, et al. A novel vitreous substitute of using a foldable capsular vitreous body injected with polyvinylalcohol hydrogel. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1838.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Hill R, Solt G. Engineering Money. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Gurtoo A, Williams C, editors. Developing Country Perspectives on Public Service Delivery. New Delhi: Springer India; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Subashini P, Krishnaveni M, Sridevi N. Period Prediction System for Tamil Epigraphical Scripts Based on Support Vector Machine. In: Singh C, Singh Lehal G, Sengupta J, Sharma DV, Goyal V, editors. Information Systems for Indian Languages: International Conference, ICISIL 2011, Patiala, India, March 9-11, 2011 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 23–30.

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 The AAPS Journal.

Blog post

1. Hamilton K. Overgrown Sheep Is Shorn Of 40-Kilogram Fleece. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Air Traffic Control: FAA Needs to Implement an Effective Testing Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1989 Sep. Report No.: IMTEC-89-62.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Murray TM. A grounded theory of U.S. Army installation realignment and closure leadership characteristics [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2008.

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

1. Wagner J. Indians Get Contributions and Confidence From Unexpected Source. New York Times. 2016 Oct 21;B11.

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	The AAPS Journal
Abbreviation	AAPS J.
ISSN (online)	1550-7416
Scope