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

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

Macfadden BJ: Evolution. Fossil horses--evidence for evolution. Science 2005; 307:1728–1730

A journal article with 2 authors

Braakman I, Otsu M: Biochemistry. Cargo load reduction. Science 2008; 321:499–500

A journal article with 3 authors

Rohr RP, Saavedra S, Bascompte J: Ecological networks. On the structural stability of mutualistic systems. Science 2014; 345:1253497

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chworos A, Severcan I, Koyfman AY, et al.: Building programmable jigsaw puzzles with RNA. Science 2004; 306:2068–2072

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wind YJ, Hays CF: Beyond Advertising. Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2015

An edited book

Saghieh S, Weinstein SL, Hoballah JJ, editors: Operative Dictations in Orthopedic Surgery. New York, NY, Springer, 2013

A chapter in an edited book

Jungck P, Duncan R, Mulcahy D: Variables: Identifiers, Basic Scalar Data Types, and Literals, inDuncan R, Mulcahy D, editorspacketC Programming. Berkeley, CA, Apress, 2011, pp 53–62.

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 Psychiatry.

Blog post

Andrew E: New Study Says Beef 10x More Damaging To The Environment Than Chicken, Pork Or Dairy Foods [Internet]. IFLScience 2014; [cited 2018 Oct 30] Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-study-says-beef-10x-more-damaging-environment-chicken-pork-or-dairy-foods/

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: Implementing the Small Business Innovation Development Act--The First 2 Years. Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McLeod DJ: From fear to freedom: Overcoming obstacles and living truthfully in a role2010;

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

Kishkovsky S: Russia Sentences Estonian to 15 Years in Spy Case. New York Times 2015; A10

In-text citations

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

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	The American Journal of Psychiatry
Abbreviation	Am. J. Psychiatry
ISSN (print)	0002-953X
ISSN (online)	1535-7228
Scope	Psychiatry and Mental health