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

Sowers, T., 2006, Late Quaternary atmospheric CH4 isotope record suggests marine clathrates are stable, Science, 311, no. 5762, 838–840.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kolar, C. S., and D. M. Lodge, 2002, Ecological predictions and risk assessment for alien fishes in North America, Science, 298, no. 5596, 1233–1236.

A journal article with 3 authors

Goldman, S. A., M. Nedergaard, and M. S. Windrem, 2012, Glial progenitor cell-based treatment and modeling of neurological disease, Science, 338, no. 6106, 491–495.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Bianco, P. R., L. R. Brewer, M. Corzett, R. Balhorn, Y. Yeh, S. C. Kowalczykowski, and R. J. Baskin, 2001, Processive translocation and DNA unwinding by individual RecBCD enzyme molecules, Nature, 409, no. 6818, 374–378.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lu, J., X. Zhao, and S. Yamada, 2016, Harmonic Balance Finite Element Method, John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore.

An edited book

Anderson, R., J. Brodie, E. Onsøyen, and A. T. Critchley (eds.), 2007, Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium, held in Bergen, Norway, 20 – 25 June 2004, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, Developments in Applied Phycology.

A chapter in an edited book

Porcas, R. W., 2005, Observing Blazars with VLBI, in The Role of VLBI in Astrophysics, Astrometry and Geodesy F. Mantovani, and A. Kus (Editors), Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, NATO Science Series II: Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, 93–106.

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, The Lost Ocean Of Mars, IFLScience: <https://www.iflscience.com/space/lost-ocean-mars/> (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, 1985, NASA’s FIA Program: NASA’s Progress in Implementing Financial Integrity Act Requirements, NSIAD-86-3, 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

Cano, M., 2015, An in-home visitation program for homebound older adult Veterans: A grant proposal, 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

Kenigsberg, B., 2017, The Son of Joseph, C12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sowers, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Kolar and Lodge, 2002; Sowers, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Kolar and Lodge, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Bianco et al., 2001)

About the journal

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