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

Clayton J. Chagas disease 101. Nature 2010;465:S4-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Beasley AJ, Schreier EJ. Astronomy: The United States must rejoin the SKA. Nature 2012;489:363.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rideout WM 3rd, Eggan K, Jaenisch R. Nuclear cloning and epigenetic reprogramming of the genome. Science 2001;293:1093–8.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Ploss A, Evans MJ, Gaysinskaya VA, Panis M, You H, de Jong YP, Rice CM. Human occludin is a hepatitis C virus entry factor required for infection of mouse cells. Nature 2009;457:882–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kirsh SJ. Media and Youth. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2009.

An edited book

Castells MC, editor. Anaphylaxis and Hypersensitivity Reactions. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2011. XIV, 362 p. 19 illus., 9 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Asai K, Kondo T, Mizuki A, Billinghurst M. Lunar Surface Collaborative Browsing System for Science Museum Exhibitions. In: Pan Z, Cheok AD, Müller W, Zhang X, Wong K, editors. Transactions on Edutainment IV. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 34–43.

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

Carpineti A. Galaxy Collisions Might Be Shrouding Black Holes In Dust. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017.

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. Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Improved Planning and Acquisition Strategies Can Help Address Operational Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006 Apr. Report No.: GAO-06-610T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Coleman KM. Parent involvement in the promotion of healthy outcomes for young girls: A grant writing project [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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

Crow K. Glittering Prizes. New York Times. 2003;141.

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

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