How to format your references using the The American Statistician citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Statistician (TAS). 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

López-Urrutia, A. (2003), “Allometry: How reliable is the biological time clock?,” Nature, 424, 269–70; discussion 270.

A journal article with 2 authors

Heilbron, J. L., and Bynum, W. F. (2001), “1901 and all that,” Nature, 409, 13–16.

A journal article with 3 authors

Neal, C. R., Haggerty, S. E., and Sautter, V. (2001), “‘Majorite’ and ‘silicate perovskite’ mineral compositions in xenoliths from Malaita,” Science (New York, N.Y.), 292, 1015.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yamachika, R., Grobis, M., Wachowiak, A., and Crommie, M. F. (2004), “Controlled atomic doping of a single C60 molecule,” Science (New York, N.Y.), 304, 281–284.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Matte, G. S. (2015), Perfusion for Congenital Heart Surgery, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Rosenberg, E. (2013), The Hologenome Concept: Human, Animal and Plant Microbiota, (I. Zilber-Rosenberg, ed.), Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Hayashi, T., Kojima, A., Miyazaki, T., Oda, N., Wakita, K., and Furusawa, T. (2014), “Application of FPGA to Nuclear Power Plant I&C Systems,” in Progress of Nuclear Safety for Symbiosis and Sustainability: Advanced Digital Instrumentation, Control and Information Systems for Nuclear Power Plants, eds. H. Yoshikawa and Z. Zhang, Tokyo: Springer Japan, pp. 41–47.

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 Statistician.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016), “What Does Empty Space Sound Like? We Need Your Help To Find Out,” IFLScience, 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 (1986), Data Processing: SBA Needs To Strengthen Management of Its Computer Systems, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lucas, M. A. (2017), “Bridging the Gap Between Schools and Families Through Teacher Home Visits,” Doctoral dissertation, St. Charles, MO: Lindenwood University.

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

Billard, M. (2010), “British Invasion, Only This Time It’s in Retail,” New York Times, E5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (López-Urrutia 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Heilbron and Bynum 2001; López-Urrutia 2003).

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

Two authors: (Heilbron and Bynum 2001)
Three or more authors: (Yamachika et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Statistician
Abbreviation	Am. Stat.
ISSN (print)	0003-1305
ISSN (online)	1537-2731
Scope	Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty General Mathematics Statistics and Probability