How to format your references using the Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. 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

McDonald F. (2011) Watching the players at the climate poker table. Nature 480, 293.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wright K. P. Jr and Czeisler C. A. (2002) Absence of circadian phase resetting in response to bright light behind the knees. Science 297, 571.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alkire M. T., Hudetz A. G. and Tononi G. (2008) Consciousness and anesthesia. Science 322, 876–880.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jaenicke-Després V., Buckler E. S., Smith B. D., Gilbert M. T. P., Cooper A., Doebley J. and Pääbo S. (2003) Early allelic selection in maize as revealed by ancient DNA. Science 302, 1206–1208.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bell M. (2016) Incremental Software Architecture., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Martin K. (2013) Agroecology. ed. J. Sauerborn, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Berg J. and Järvisalo M. (2016) Impact of SAT-Based Preprocessing on Core-Guided MaxSAT Solving. In Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming: 22nd International Conference, CP 2016, Toulouse, France, September 5-9, 2016, Proceedings (ed. M. Rueher). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham. pp. 66–85.

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 Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

Blog post

Luntz S. (2016) Santa Claus Mysteries Explained With Theory Of Relativity, Sort Of. IFLScience.

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 (2003) Vehicle Donations: Taxpayer Considerations When Donating Vehicles to Charities., 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

Kotamreddy A. (2017) Design and Simulation of 16 Psk Super Regenerative Receiver. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach.

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

(nyt) S. K. (2005) World Briefing | Europe: Azerbaijan: Opposition Urges Protests Over Killing. New York Times, A8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McDonald, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Wright and Czeisler, 2002; McDonald, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Wright and Czeisler, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Jaenicke-Després et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta
Abbreviation	Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta
ISSN (print)	0016-7037
Scope	Geochemistry and Petrology