How to format your references using the The American Journal of Bioethics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB). 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 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

Sargis, E. J. 2002. Paleontology. Primate origins nailed. Science (New York, N.Y.) 298(5598): 1564–1565.

A journal article with 2 authors

Heinrich, A., and S. Loth. 2011. Physics. A logical use for atoms. Science (New York, N.Y.) 332(6033): 1039–1040.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pesaran, B., M. J. Nelson, and R. A. Andersen. 2008. Free choice activates a decision circuit between frontal and parietal cortex. Nature 453(7193): 406–409.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Sumbre, G., G. Fiorito, T. Flash, and B. Hochner. 2005. Neurobiology: motor control of flexible octopus arms. Nature 433(7026): 595–596.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Maji, P., and S. K. Pal. 2012. Rough-Fuzzy Pattern Recognition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Fox, S. H., and J. M. Brotchie, ed. 2014. Levodopa-Induced Dyskinesia in Parkinson’s Disease. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Shaw, S., and K. Kellenberger. 2012. Grouping and Summarizing Data. In Beginning T-SQL 2012, ed. K. Kellenberger, 169–202. Berkeley, CA: Apress.

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 Journal of Bioethics.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015. The Secret of the World’s Smelliest Flower. IFLScience. IFLScience. July 9.

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. 1979. Assessing the Output of Federal Commercially Directed R&D. PAD-79-69. 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

Bravo, J. 2009. Project Share: Implementing an aftercare program for recovering adolescents: A grant proposal. Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Pilon, M. 2012. Chronicling The Business Of the Games. New York Times, August 12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sargis 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Sargis 2002; Heinrich and Loth 2011).

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

Two authors: (Heinrich and Loth 2011)
Three or more authors: (Sumbre et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Journal of Bioethics
ISSN (print)	1526-5161
ISSN (online)	1536-0075
Scope