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

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

1. Dickson, J.A.D. (2002). Fossil echinoderms as monitor of the Mg/Ca ratio of Phanerozoic oceans. Science 298, 1222–1224.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Donaldson, Z.R., and Young, L.J. (2008). Oxytocin, vasopressin, and the neurogenetics of sociality. Science 322, 900–904.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Waterhouse, P.M., Wang, M.B., and Lough, T. (2001). Gene silencing as an adaptive defence against viruses. Nature 411, 834–842.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

1. Chittka, L., Dyer, A.G., Bock, F., and Dornhaus, A. (2003). Psychophysics: bees trade off foraging speed for accuracy. Nature 424, 388.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Robbins, N.B. (2004). Creating More Effective Graphs (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

1. (2009). Non-Surgical Treatment of Keratinocyte Skin Cancer (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

1. Wang, S., and Lv, F. (2013). Drug Screening Applications of Functionalized Conjugated Polyelectrolytes. In Functionalized Conjugated Polyelectrolytes: Design and Biomedical Applications, F. Lv, ed. (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 65–68.

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 Human Genetics.

Blog post

1. Luntz, S. (2014). Where Might We Find Life In the Solar System? (IFLScience).

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 (2007). Rail Safety: The Federal Railroad Administration Is Taking Steps to Better Target Its Oversight, but Assessment of Results Is Needed to Determine Impact (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

1. Boylan, M. (2010). Acute physiological resonses to yoga activity in a hot environment. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach.

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. Yablonsky, L. (2010). Museo Drive. New York Times M256.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Journal of Human Genetics
Abbreviation	Am. J. Hum. Genet.
ISSN (print)	0002-9297
ISSN (online)	1537-6605
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)

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