How to format your references using the The American Journal of Bioethics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB). 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

Yuan, J. 2014. Applied physics: Bright electron twisters. Nature 509(7498): 37–38.

A journal article with 2 authors

Amack, J. D., and M. L. Manning. 2012. Knowing the boundaries: extending the differential adhesion hypothesis in embryonic cell sorting. Science (New York, N.Y.) 338(6104): 212–215.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rougier, G. W., S. Apesteguía, and L. C. Gaetano. 2011. Highly specialized mammalian skulls from the Late Cretaceous of South America. Nature 479(7371): 98–102.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Shanahan, T. M., J. T. Overpeck, K. J. Anchukaitis, J. W. Beck, J. E. Cole, D. L. Dettman, J. A. Peck, C. A. Scholz, and J. W. King. 2009. Atlantic forcing of persistent drought in West Africa. Science (New York, N.Y.) 324(5925): 377–380.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Yalaoui, A., H. Chehade, F. Yalaoui, and L. Amodeo. 2012. Optimization of Logistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Adhikari, A. 2015. Advances in Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Edited by Jhimli Adhikari. Vol. 79. Intelligent Systems Reference Library. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Koltay, P., J. Ducrée, and R. D. Zengerle. 2006. Micro-Fluidic Platforms. In BioMEMS, ed. G. A. Urban, 139–165. Microsystems. Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 American Journal of Bioethics.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015. Nobel Prize In Chemistry Awarded For Work On Natural DNA Repair. IFLScience. IFLScience. October 8.

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. 1992. NASA Budget: Potential Shortfalls in Funding NASA’s 5-Year Plan. T-NSIAD-92-18. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Baghaei Lakeh, A. 2013. Approximate Analytical Solutions of a Generalized van der Pol Oscillator. Doctoral dissertation, Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois 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

Herrman, J. 2016. Stage Craft. New York Times, December 13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Yuan 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Amack and Manning 2012; Yuan 2014).

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

Two authors: (Amack and Manning 2012)
Three or more authors: (Shanahan et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Journal of Bioethics
ISSN (print)	1526-5161
ISSN (online)	1536-0075
Scope