How to format your references using the The American Midland Naturalist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Midland Naturalist. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Williams, R. 2011. Biomarkers: warning signs. Nature, 475:S5-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shizuka, D. and B. E. Lyon. 2010. Coots use hatch order to learn to recognize and reject conspecific brood parasitic chicks. Nature, 463:223–226.

A journal article with 3 authors

Khalil, A. M., J. C. Cambier and M. J. Shlomchik. 2012. B cell receptor signal transduction in the GC is short-circuited by high phosphatase activity. Science, 336:1178–1181.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Liu, S., E. A. Abbondanzieri, J. W. Rausch, S. F. J. Le Grice and X. Zhuang. 2008. Slide into action: dynamic shuttling of HIV reverse transcriptase on nucleic acid substrates. Science, 322:1092–1097.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vacca, J. R. 2006. Optical Networking Best Practices Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Kiang, T. K. L., K. J. Wilby and M. H. H. Ensom (eds). 2016. Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacodynamic Drug Interactions Associated with Antiretroviral Drugs. Springer, Singapore. VII, 135 p. 40 illus., 25 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Rotte, A. and M. Bhandaru. 2016. Melanoma—Treatment. p. 79–109. In: M. Bhandaru (ed.). Immunotherapy of Melanoma. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 Midland Naturalist.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2014. Sneezing Flings Your Spit and Germs 200 Times Further Than Previously Thought. 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

Government Accountability Office. 2012. Information Technology: DHS Needs to Enhance Management of Cost and Schedule for Major Investments. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sexton, S. M. 2017. Progress Toward Analytic Predictions of Supersonic Hydrocarbon-Air Combustion: Computation of Ignition Times and Supersonic Mixing Layers. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA.

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

Dorment, L. P. 2017. Between Gigs, a TV Host Takes a Spin.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Williams, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Shizuka and Lyon, 2010; Williams, 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Shizuka and Lyon, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Liu et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Midland Naturalist
Abbreviation	Am. Midl. Nat.
ISSN (print)	0003-0031
ISSN (online)	1938-4238
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics