How to format your references using the Fossil Record citation style

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

Guzmán, M. G.: Global voices of science. Deciphering dengue: the Cuban experience, Science, 309, 1495–1497, 2005.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gan, J. and Appenzeller, T.: 2013 Visualization Challenge. Introduction, Science, 343, 599, 2014.

A journal article with 3 authors

Costello, M. J., May, R. M., and Stork, N. E.: Response to comments on “Can we name Earth’s species before they go extinct?,” Science, 341, 237, 2013.

A journal article with 100 or more authors

Hallem, E. A., Nicole Fox, A., Zwiebel, L. J., and Carlson, J. R.: Olfaction: mosquito receptor for human-sweat odorant, Nature, 427, 212–213, 2004.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Le Chevalier, F., Lesselier, D., and Staraj, R.: Non-standard Antennas, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2011.

An edited book

Cockell, C. S. (Ed.): The Meaning of Liberty Beyond Earth, Springer International Publishing, Cham, VIII, 272 p. 14 illus pp., 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Tehrani, M. A., Akbari, A., and Majumder, M.: Polylactic Acid (PLA) Layered Silicate Nanocomposites, in: Handbook of Polymernanocomposites. Processing, Performance and Application: Volume A: Layered Silicates, edited by: Pandey, J. K., Reddy, K. R., Mohanty, A. K., and Misra, M., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 53–67, 2014.

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 Fossil Record.

Blog post

Anti-Vaccination Movement Turns Against Lifesaving Vitamin Shots: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/anti-vaccination-movement-turns-against-lifesaving-vitamin-shots/, last access: 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: Student Aid Information and Private Tuition-Guarantee Programs, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1991.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

O’Leary, J. J.: Telling the story: Teaching leaders the art of storytelling and its impact on individuals and the organization, Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, 2012.

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

Hollander, S.: Transfer Finds Home At Manhattan College, New York Times, 6th October, 88, 2002.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Guzmán, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Gan and Appenzeller, 2014; Guzmán, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Gan and Appenzeller, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Hallem et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Fossil Record
ISSN (print)	2193-0066
ISSN (online)	2193-0074
Scope