How to format your references using the American Journal of Public Health citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Journal of Public Health. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Mejia R. Human rights: from accountability to rebuilding. Science. 2006;313(5785):289.

A journal article with 2 authors

Glazman LI, Ashoori RC. Physics. Coupling qubits by waves on the electron sea. Science. 2004;304(5670):524-525.

A journal article with 3 authors

Trumbore S, Brando P, Hartmann H. Forest health and global change. Science. 2015;349(6250):814-818.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ding Z, Liu S, Wang X, Khaidakov M, Dai Y, Mehta JL. Oxidant stress in mitochondrial DNA damage, autophagy and inflammation in atherosclerosis. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1077.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McEvily AJ. Metal Failures. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Schein M, Rogers P, Assalia A, eds. Schein’s Common Sense Emergency Abdominal Surgery: An Unconventional Book for Trainees and Thinking Surgeons. Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Christenson B, Tassi F. Gases in Volcanic Lake Environments. In: Rouwet D, Christenson B, Tassi F, Vandemeulebrouck J, eds. Volcanic Lakes. Advances in Volcanology. Springer; 2015:125-153.

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 American Journal of Public Health.

Blog post

Fang J. More Efficient Balls, Not Bigger Ones, Win the Mouse Sperm Race. IFLScience. January 26, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/more-efficient-balls-not-bigger-ones-win-mouse-sperm-race/

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. FTS2001: Transition Challenges Jeopardize Program Goals. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Richardson MM. Challenging the South’s Black-White Binary: Haliwa-Saponi Indians and Political Autonomy. Doctoral dissertation. University of North Carolina; 2013.

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 C. County Gears Up for Its First Empire Games. New York Times. July 22, 2007:WE12.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	American Journal of Public Health
Abbreviation	Am. J. Public Health
ISSN (print)	0090-0036
ISSN (online)	1541-0048
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health