How to format your references using the Acta Geotechnica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Geotechnica. 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 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

Gee H (2015) Origin and evolution of vertebrates. Nature 520:449

A journal article with 2 authors

Hartland GV, Lo SS (2013) Physics. Spectroscopy beyond the single-particle limit. Science 341:36–37

A journal article with 3 authors

Pielke R Jr, Wigley T, Green C (2008) Dangerous assumptions. Nature 452:531–532

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Dillin A, Hsu A-L, Arantes-Oliveira N, et al (2002) Rates of behavior and aging specified by mitochondrial function during development. Science 298:2398–2401

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kerzner H, Belack C (2010) Managing Complex Projects. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Parrotta JA, Trosper RL (2012) Traditional Forest-Related Knowledge: Sustaining Communities, Ecosystems and Biocultural Diversity. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Sternberg RJ (2014) A Model for Instruction and Assessment of Cognitive Readiness. In: O’Neil HF, Perez RS, Baker EL (eds) Teaching and Measuring Cognitive Readiness. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 71–92

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 Acta Geotechnica.

Blog post

Andrew E (2016) Polar Bears:Climate Change Is A Bigger Threat Than Trophy Hunting. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/polar-bearsclimate-change-bigger-threat-trophy-hunting/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (2008) Social Security Administration Field Offices: Reduced Workforce Faces Challenges as Baby Boomers Retire. 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

Davies GL (2015) An analysis of Pat Metheny’s and Lyle Mays’s “Third Wind”: Arranging techniques and performance considerations. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Hughes O, Kelly C (2010) It’s Enough to Make the Generous Turn Grinchy. New York Times MB9

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Acta Geotechnica
Abbreviation	Acta Geotech.
ISSN (print)	1861-1125
ISSN (online)	1861-1133
Scope	Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology