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

Phillips, P. 2000. Organic materials. From insulator to superconductor. Nature, 406:687–688.

A journal article with 2 authors

Taylor, R. and A. Forge. 2005. Developmental biology. Life after deaf for hair cells? Science, 307:1056–1058.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sun, B., P. Munroe and G. Wang. 2013. Ruthenium nanocrystals as cathode catalysts for lithium-oxygen batteries with a superior performance. Sci. Rep., 3:2247.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wang, Y., N. S. Rogado, R. J. Cava and N. P. Ong. 2003. Spin entropy as the likely source of enhanced thermopower in Na(x)Co2O4. Nature, 423:425–428.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gros, D. and K. Lannoo. 2004. The Euro Capital Market. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Khachidze, V., T. Wang, S. Siddiqui, V. Liu, S. Cappuccio and A. Lim (eds). 2012. Contemporary Research on E-business Technology and Strategy: International Conference, iCETS 2012, Tianjin, China, August 29-31, 2012, Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. XVI, 730 p. 319 illus p.

A chapter in an edited book

Rao, K. R. and A. C. Paranjpe. 2016. Self, Person, and Personality. p. 129–165. In: A. C. Paranjpe (ed.). Psychology in the Indian Tradition. Springer India, New Delhi.

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

Fang, J. 2014. Why Do We Yawn? 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. 1999. Telecommunications: Process by Which Mergers of Local Telephone Companies Are Reviewed. 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

Branch, J. 2017. A Case Study of Perceptions and Experiences among African-American Males Regarding College Dropout Rates in a Community College. Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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

Kelly, T. 2006. Performing Miracles, With Wrench and Rivet.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Phillips, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Phillips, 2000; Taylor and Forge, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Taylor and Forge, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al., 2003)

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