How to format your references using the Canadian Geotechnical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Canadian Geotechnical Journal. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Burrows, A. 2000. Supernova explosions in the Universe. Nature, 403(6771): 727–733.
A journal article with 2 authors
Boguski, M.S., and McIntosh, M.W. 2003. Biomedical informatics for proteomics. Nature, 422(6928): 233–237.
A journal article with 3 authors
Chklovskii, D.B., Mel, B.W., and Svoboda, K. 2004. Cortical rewiring and information storage. Nature, 431(7010): 782–788.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Chen, H., Wang, Z., Zhang, R., Wang, H., Lin, S., Yu, F., and Moser, H.O. 2014. A meta-substrate to enhance the bandwidth of metamaterials. Scientific reports, 4: 5264.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Popkin, J.D. 2011. A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
An edited book
Zecchin, M., and Sinagra, G. (Editors). 2016. The Arrhythmic Patient in the Emergency Department: A Practical Guide for Cardiologists and Emergency Physicians. Springer International Publishing, Cham.
A chapter in an edited book
Ferrari, A. 2010. Perceptive Defects. In The Spastic Forms of Cerebral Palsy: A Guide to the Assessment of Adaptive Functions. Edited by G. Cioni. Springer, Milano. pp. 73–98.

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 Canadian Geotechnical Journal.

Blog post
Andrews, R. 2016. Hundreds Of Ancient Human Footprints Found In 19,000-Year-Old Volcanic Ash. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/environment/hundreds-ancient-human-footprints-found-19000yearold-volcanic-ash/. [accessed 30 October 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. 2014. Public Transit: Length of Development Process, Cost Estimates, and Ridership Forecasts for Capital-Investment Grant Projects. 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
Wasserman, M.M. 2017. Psychological Symptoms, Family Functioning, and Religious Coping in Second- and Third-Generation Holocaust Survivors. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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
Vecsey, G. 2009. Weather Doesn’t Dampen Latest Heart-Stopper in the Bronx. New York Times,: SP3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Burrows 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Burrows 2000, Boguski and McIntosh 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Boguski and McIntosh 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Chen et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleCanadian Geotechnical Journal
AbbreviationCan. Geotech. J.
ISSN (print)0008-3674
ISSN (online)1208-6010
ScopeGeotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology

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