How to format your references using the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). 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 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

Hermann, T., 2015, Non-coding RNA: Antibiotic tricks a switch, Nature, 526, no. 7575, 650–651.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fox, B. A., and D. J. Bzik, 2002, De novo pyrimidine biosynthesis is required for virulence of Toxoplasma gondii, Nature, 415, no. 6874, 926–929.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nishimune, H., J. R. Sanes, and S. S. Carlson, 2004, A synaptic laminin-calcium channel interaction organizes active zones in motor nerve terminals, Nature, 432, no. 7017, 580–587.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Zheng, Y., S. Z. Josefowicz, A. Kas, T.-T. Chu, M. A. Gavin, and A. Y. Rudensky, 2007, Genome-wide analysis of Foxp3 target genes in developing and mature regulatory T cells, Nature, 445, no. 7130, 936–940.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bunnell, T., 2016, From World City to the World in One City, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Pickering, G., and S. Gibson (eds.), 2015, Pain, Emotion and Cognition: A Complex Nexus, Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Gao, Y., J. Yang, X. Zhang, and Y. Jiang, 2011, Capacity Limits for a Cognitive Radio Network under Fading Channel, in NETWORKING 2011 Workshops: International IFIP TC 6 Workshops, PE-CRN, NC-Pro, WCNS, and SUNSET 2011, Held at NETWORKING 2011, Valencia, Spain, May 13, 2011, Revised Selected Papers V. Casares-Giner, P. Manzoni, and A. Pont (Editors), Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 42–51.

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 Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015, Scientists Develop “Smart” Insulin That Automatically Activates When Needed, IFLScience: <https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-develop-smart-insulin-automatically-activates-when-needed/> (accessed October 30, 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, 1986, Drug Regulation: FDA’s Computer Systems Need To Be Better Managed, IMTEC-86-32, 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

Cuomo, A. P., 2013, SB 48 and social media: Constituing an audience for and against California’s LGBT education legislation, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Grynbaum, M. M., and J. Herrman, 2016, Breitbart Gains Voice in White House, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hermann, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Fox and Bzik, 2002; Hermann, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Fox and Bzik, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Zheng et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
ISSN (print)	0037-1106
ISSN (online)	1943-3573
Scope