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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 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

Chapman T. High throughput goes 3D. Nature 2003;425:871.

A journal article with 2 authors

Löytynoja A, Goldman N. Phylogeny-aware gap placement prevents errors in sequence alignment and evolutionary analysis. Science 2008;320:1632–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ghaffari HO, Nasseri MHB, Young RP. Faulting of rocks in a three-dimensional stress field by micro-anticracks. Sci Rep 2014;4:5011.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Nam KT, Kim D-W, Yoo PJ, Chiang C-Y, Meethong N, Hammond PT, Chiang Y-M, Belcher AM. Virus-enabled synthesis and assembly of nanowires for lithium ion battery electrodes. Science 2006;312:885–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bagrintseva KI. Carbonate Reservoir Rocks. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

Schirner G, Götz M, Rettberg A, Zanella MC, Rammig FJ, editors. Embedded Systems: Design, Analysis and Verification: 4th IFIP TC 10 International Embedded Systems Symposium, IESS 2013, Paderborn, Germany, June 17-19, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. XIV, 354 p. 136 illus p.

A chapter in an edited book

Collins ML, Murphy MP. Activation: Solving Unemployment or Supporting a Low-Pay Economy? In: Murphy MP, Dukelow F, editors. The Irish Welfare State in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges and Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK; 2016. p. 67–92.

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 The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Blog post

Hamilton K. Why You Should Never Squash A Spider [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mother-wolf-spider-squashed-hundreds-babies-scatter/

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. Strategic Bombers: Updated Status of the B-1B Recovery Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991 May. Report No.: NSIAD-91-189.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lin TS. The invisible “religious” minority: Working with the nonreligious bereaved [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2014.

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

McGOVERN G. George McGovern on Op-Ed. New York Times. 2012;0.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Abbreviation	Am. J. Clin. Nutr.
ISSN (print)	0002-9165
ISSN (online)	1938-3207
Scope	Medicine (miscellaneous) Nutrition and Dietetics