How to format your references using the The American Naturalist citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Naturalist. 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

Kamien, R. D. 2003. Physics. Topology from the bottom up. Science (New York, N.Y.) 299:1671–1673.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ketov, S. V., and D. V. Louzguine-Luzgin. 2013. Localized shear deformation and softening of bulk metallic glass: stress or temperature driven? Scientific reports 3:2798.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sharma, B., S. Mandani, and T. K. Sarma. 2013. Biogenic growth of alloys and core-shell nanostructures using urease as a nanoreactor at ambient conditions. Scientific reports 3:2601.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Gupta, A. K., K. Mohan, M. Das, and R. K. Singh. 2013. Solar forcing of the Indian summer monsoon variability during the Ållerød period. Scientific reports 3:2753.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wood, J., W. Brown, and H. Howe. 2013. IT Auditing and Application Controls for Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Campuzano, F. 2011. Supply Chain Simulation: A System Dynamics Approach for Improving Performance. (J. Mula, ed.). Springer, London.

A chapter in an edited book

Grob, A., C. Colleran, and B. McStay. 2011. UBF an Essential Player in Maintenance of Active NORs and Nucleolar Formation. Pages 83–103 in M. O. J. Olson, ed. The Nucleolus. Springer, New York, NY.

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 Naturalist.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2014. Researchers Make Self-Moving Alcohol Droplets. IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 1995. Space Shuttle: NASA Must Reduce Costs Further to Operate Within Future Projected Funds (No. NSIAD-95-118). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kyereboah, R. 2015. Criteria For Appointing Board Members to Corporate Boards in Ghana (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

(nyt), S. K. 2005. World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Hacker Halts New Kremlin TV Channel. New York Times, p. A16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kamien 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kamien 2003; Ketov and Louzguine-Luzgin 2013).

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

Two authors: (Ketov and Louzguine-Luzgin 2013)
Three or more authors: (Gupta et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	The American Naturalist
Abbreviation	Am. Nat.
ISSN (print)	0003-0147
ISSN (online)	1537-5323
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics