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

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

Baker J. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Water, water, not everywhere? Introduction to special issue. Science 2007;317:1705.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wijffels RH, Barbosa MJ. An outlook on microalgal biofuels. Science 2010;329:796–799.

A journal article with 3 authors

Javaux EJ, Knoll AH, Walter MR. Morphological and ecological complexity in early eukaryotic ecosystems. Nature 2001;412:66–69.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Boyington JC, Motyka SA, Schuck P, et al. Crystal structure of an NK cell immunoglobulin-like receptor in complex with its class I MHC ligand. Nature 2000;405:537–543.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Warren AEA, Lerner RM, Phelps E. Thriving and Spirituality Among Youth. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Extracellular Composite Matrices in Arthropods. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Van Landeghem H. Pharmaceutical Distribution Network. In: Merkuryev Y, Merkuryeva G, Piera MÀ, et al., editor(s). Simulation-Based Case Studies in Logistics: Education and Applied Research. London: Springer; 2009. p. 49–64.

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 Gastroenterology.

Blog post

Fang J. Caterpillars Disarm Corn With Their Poop [Internet]. IFLScience 2015;[cited 2018 Oct 30] Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/caterpillars-disarm-corn-their-poop/

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. Federal Research: Assessment of the Financial Audit for SEMATECH’s Activities in 1988. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Altassan MA. Employee Training to Increase Efficiency in the Saudi Private Sector. 2017;

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

(nyt) LG. National Briefing | Washington: Chunk Of Marble Falls From Supreme Court. New York Times 2005;A20.

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 Gastroenterology
Abbreviation	Am. J. Gastroenterol.
ISSN (print)	0002-9270
ISSN (online)	1572-0241
Scope	Gastroenterology Hepatology