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

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

Bréon FM. Climate. How do aerosols affect cloudiness and climate? Science. 2006;313(5787):623-624.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rodell CB, Burdick JA. Materials science: Radicals promote magnetic gel assembly. Nature. 2014;514(7524):574-575.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kaczmarczyk A, Vorholt JA, Francez-Charlot A. Synthetic vanillate-regulated promoter for graded gene expression in Sphingomonas. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6453.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Moreno PI, Jacobson GL Jr, Lowell TV, Denton GH. Interhemispheric climate links revealed by late-glacial cooling episode in southern Chile. Nature. 2001;409(6822):804-808.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Janke SJ, Tinsley FC. Introduction to Linear Models and Statistical Inference. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

Janigro D, ed. The Cell Cycle in the Central Nervous System. Humana Press; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Niane LM, Bairam A. Age-Dependent Changes in Breathing Stability in Rats. In: Nurse CA, Gonzalez C, Peers C, Prabhakar N, eds. Arterial Chemoreception: From Molecules to Systems. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Springer Netherlands; 2012:37-41.

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 Sports Medicine.

Blog post

Hale T. There’s Very Little Evidence That Flossing Actually Works. IFLScience. Published August 3, 2016. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/theres-very-little-evidence-that-flossing-actually-works/

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. Student Loan Programs: Lower Interest Rates and Higher Loan Volume Have Increased Federal Consolidation Loan Costs. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sutherland KA. The Impact of Early Childhood Programs on Student Achievement. Doctoral dissertation. Lindenwood University; 2009.

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

Leland J. Starring in Someone Else’s Film. New York Times. August 19, 2016:MB4.

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 ^2,6–8.

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Journal of Sports Medicine
Abbreviation	Am. J. Sports Med.
ISSN (print)	0363-5465
ISSN (online)	1552-3365
Scope	Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation

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