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

Clutton-Brock, T. 2007. Sexual selection in males and females. Science (New York, N.Y.) 318(5858):1882–1885.

A journal article with 2 authors

Koelle, K., and D. A. Rasmussen. 2014. Influenza: Prediction is worth a shot. Nature 507(7490):47–48.

A journal article with 3 authors

Saavedra, S., F. Reed-Tsochas, and B. Uzzi. 2009. A simple model of bipartite cooperation for ecological and organizational networks. Nature 457(7228):463–466.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Galy, V., C. France-Lanord, O. Beyssac, P. Faure, H. Kudrass, and F. Palhol. 2007. Efficient organic carbon burial in the Bengal fan sustained by the Himalayan erosional system. Nature 450(7168):407–410.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lastovetsky, A. 2003. Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Networks. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Feldman, R. M. 2010. Applied Probability and Stochastic Processes. Page C. Valdez-Flores, editor. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Binder, H. 2016. Clinical Evaluation of Residual Brain Function and Responsiveness in Disorders of Consciousness. Pages 37–49 in M. M. Monti and W. G. Sannita, editors. Brain Function and Responsiveness in Disorders of Consciousness. 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 Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2014, June 14. Curiosity Observes First Transit On Another World. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/curiosity-observes-first-transit-another-world/.

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. 2003. Business Modernization: NASA’s Integrated Financial Management Program Does Not Fully Address Agency’s External Reporting Issues. U.S. Government Printing Office, GAO-04-151, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ho, L. 2012. Determination of Ibuprofen Isotherm Using Supercritical Fluid Chromatography. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Hodara, S. 2013, September 22. Where Medieval Armor Meets the Aquatic. New York Times:WE9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clutton-Brock 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Clutton-Brock 2007; Koelle and Rasmussen 2014).

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

Two authors: (Koelle and Rasmussen 2014)
Three or more authors: (Galy et al. 2007)

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

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