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

Macilwain, C. 2000. NSF puts big money into complex ecology. Nature, 407:823.

A journal article with 2 authors

Steinman, R. M. and J. Banchereau. 2007. Taking dendritic cells into medicine. Nature, 449:419–426.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mal, N. K., M. Fujiwara and Y. Tanaka. 2003. Photocontrolled reversible release of guest molecules from coumarin-modified mesoporous silica. Nature, 421:350–353.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yeung, T., G. E. Gilbert, J. Shi, J. Silvius, A. Kapus and S. Grinstein. 2008. Membrane phosphatidylserine regulates surface charge and protein localization. Science, 319:210–213.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bayuk, J. L., J. Healey, P. Rohmeyer, M. H. Sachs, J. Schmidt and J. Weiss. 2012. Cyber Security Policy Guidebook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Kremer, F. (ed). 2014. Dynamics in Geometrical Confinement. Springer International Publishing, Cham. VIII, 366 p. 184 illus., 116 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Terruzzi, I. 2012. Gene Polymorphisms and Athletic Performance. p. 23–31. In: L. Luzi (ed.). Cellular Physiology and Metabolism of Physical Exercise. Springer, Milano.

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

Hale, T. 2016. What Happens If You Add Molten Aluminum To Dry Ice and Liquid Nitrogen? 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. 1985. Job Training: Effect of Under-Reported Unemployment Data on Grant Funding to Rural Areas. 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

Pezzolesi, M. G. 2008. Novel Mechanisms of PTEN Dysfunction in PTEN Hamartoma Tumor Syndromes. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Wagner, J. 2017. Idea Reborn: Mets Consider Six-Man Rotation.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Macilwain, 2000; Steinman and Banchereau, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Steinman and Banchereau, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Yeung 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