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

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

Mattick JS: Genome-sequencing anniversary. The genomic foundation is shifting. Science 2011; 331:874

A journal article with 2 authors

Stocker R, Durham WM: Microbiology. Tumbling for stealth? Science 2009; 325:400–402

A journal article with 3 authors

Stine AR, Huybers P, Fung IY: Changes in the phase of the annual cycle of surface temperature. Nature 2009; 457:435–440

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ghobadloo SM, Balcerzak AK, Gargaun A, et al.: Carbohydrate-based ice recrystallization inhibitors increase infectivity and thermostability of viral vectors. Sci Rep 2014; 4:5903

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Spatschek K-H: High Temperature Plasmas. Weinheim, Germany, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2011

An edited book

Merci B, Roekaerts D, Sadiki A, editors: Experiments and Numerical Simulations of Diluted Spray Turbulent Combustion: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Turbulent Spray Combustion. Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, 2011

A chapter in an edited book

Calvin JM: Adaptive Global Search, inFloudas CA, Pardalos PM, editorsEncyclopedia of Optimization. Boston, MA, Springer US, 2009, pp 19–21.

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 Psychiatry.

Blog post

Hamilton K: “Seeing’ Music Or “Tasting’ Numbers? Here’s What We Can Learn From People With Synaesthesia [Internet]. IFLScience 2017; [cited 2018 Oct 30] Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/seeing-music-or-tasting-numbers-heres-what-we-can-learn-from-people-with-synaesthesia/

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: Transportation Security: TSA Could Strengthen Oversight of Allegations of Employee Misconduct. Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2013

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tripamer AJ: Teacher Perceptions of Teacher Evaluations in the Fort Zumwalt School District2013;

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

Greenhouse L: Justices Agree to Consider EBay Appeal in Patent Case. New York Times 2005; C9

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 Psychiatry
Abbreviation	Am. J. Psychiatry
ISSN (print)	0002-953X
ISSN (online)	1535-7228
Scope	Psychiatry and Mental health