How to format your references using the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. 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

Bally, J. 2015. Astrophysics: Mystery survivor of a supermassive black hole. Nature 524(7565):301–302.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frey, P., and M. Church. 2009. Geophysics. How river beds move. Science (New York, N.Y.) 325(5947):1509–1510.

A journal article with 3 authors

Libby, P., P. M. Ridker, and G. K. Hansson. 2011. Progress and challenges in translating the biology of atherosclerosis. Nature 473(7347):317–325.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jaramillo, C., D. Ochoa, L. Contreras, M. Pagani, H. Carvajal-Ortiz, L. M. Pratt, S. Krishnan, A. Cardona, M. Romero, L. Quiroz, G. Rodriguez, M. J. Rueda, F. de la Parra, S. Morón, W. Green, G. Bayona, C. Montes, O. Quintero, R. Ramirez, G. Mora, S. Schouten, H. Bermudez, R. Navarrete, F. Parra, M. Alvarán, J. Osorno, J. L. Crowley, V. Valencia, and J. Vervoort. 2010. Effects of rapid global warming at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary on neotropical vegetation. Science (New York, N.Y.) 330(6006):957–961.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bauldry, W. C. 2009. Introduction to Real Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Guerraoui, R., and P. Romano, editors. 2015. Transactional Memory. Foundations, Algorithms, Tools, and Applications: COST Action Euro-TM IC1001. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Cook, R. F. 2005. Microstructural Control of Indentation Crack Extension under Externally Applied Stress. Pages 57–67 in R. C. Bradt, D. Munz, M. Sakai, and K. W. White, editors. Fracture Mechanics of Ceramics: Active Materials, Nanoscale Materials, Composites, Glass and Fundamentals. Springer US, Boston, MA.

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 Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015, July 22. The Search For ET Has Been Going On For Years: So What Do We Know So Far? IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/search-et-has-been-going-years-so-what-do-we-know-so-far/.

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. 1997. Surface Transportation: Prospects for Innovation Through Research, Intelligent Transportation Systems, State Infrastructure Banks, and Design-Build Contracting. U.S. Government Printing Office, T-RCED-97-83, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Manzano, D. 2010. The benefits of fall intervention programs for older adults: A grant proposal. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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

Wagner, J. 2017, July 30. With Trade Deadline Near, The Mets Joke and Lose. New York Times:SP4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bally 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Frey and Church 2009; Bally 2015).

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

Two authors: (Frey and Church 2009)
Three or more authors: (Jaramillo et al. 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Transactions of the American Fisheries Society
Abbreviation	Trans. Am. Fish. Soc.
ISSN (print)	0002-8487
ISSN (online)	1548-8659
Scope	Aquatic Science Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics