How to format your references using the Continental Shelf Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Continental Shelf Research. 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
Nowak, M.A., 2004. Prisoners of the dilemma. Nature 427, 491.
A journal article with 2 authors
Smith, M.R., Caron, J.-B., 2010. Primitive soft-bodied cephalopods from the Cambrian. Nature 465, 469–472.
A journal article with 3 authors
Schoemaker, H.E., Mink, D., Wubbolts, M.G., 2003. Dispelling the myths--biocatalysis in industrial synthesis. Science 299, 1694–1697.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Kim, W.B., Voitl, T., Rodriguez-Rivera, G.J., Dumesic, J.A., 2004. Powering fuel cells with CO via aqueous polyoxometalates and gold catalysts. Science 305, 1280–1283.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Derbyshire, E., 2011. Nutrition in the Childbearing Years. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex, UK.
An edited book
McDowell, M.A., Rafati, S. (Eds.), 2014. Neglected Tropical Diseases - Middle East and North Africa, Neglected Tropical Diseases. Springer, Vienna.
A chapter in an edited book
Johnson, B., Laszka, A., Grossklags, J., 2015. Games of Timing for Security in Dynamic Environments, in: Khouzani, M., Panaousis, E., Theodorakopoulos, G. (Eds.), Decision and Game Theory for Security: 6th International Conference, GameSec 2015, London, UK, November 4-5, 2015, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 57–73.

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 Continental Shelf Research.

Blog post
Evans, K., 2017. Most People Would Rather Live Spoiler-Free Than Know The Future [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/most-people-would-rather-live-spoilerfree-than-know-the-future/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1996. Airport and Airway Trust Fund: Issues Raised by Proposal to Replace the Airline Ticket Tax (No. RCED-97-23). 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
Pettengill, J.B., 2010. Elucidating the macro- and micro-evolutionary relationships of the federally listed endangered species Agalinis acuta (Orobanchaceae) (Doctoral dissertation). University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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., 2010. Suddenly, San Francisco’s a Baseball Town. New York Times B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nowak, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Nowak, 2004; Smith and Caron, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Smith and Caron, 2010)
  • Three or more authors: (Kim et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleContinental Shelf Research
AbbreviationCont. Shelf Res.
ISSN (print)0278-4343
ScopeAquatic Science
Geology
Oceanography

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