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

Fusi S. (2008) Neuroscience. A quiescent working memory. Science 319, 1495–1496.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhu H. and Tromp J. (2013) Mapping tectonic deformation in the crust and upper mantle beneath Europe and the North Atlantic Ocean. Science 341, 871–875.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pan X., Shao M. and Kulkarni S. R. (2004) A distance of 133-137 parsecs to the Pleiades star cluster. Nature 427, 326–328.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Vasanthi D., Nagabhushan A., Matharu N. K. and Mishra R. K. (2013) A functionally conserved Polycomb response element from mouse HoxD complex responds to heterochromatin factors. Sci. Rep. 3, 3011.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stahl S. (2011) Real Analysis., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Simon M. C. ed. (2010) Diverse Effects of Hypoxia on Tumor Progression., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Xia Y. and Fu M. (2013) SMC for Missile Systems Based on Back-Stepping and ESO Techniques. In Compound Control Methodology for Flight Vehicles (ed. M. Fu). Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. pp. 65–81.

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

Andrew E. (2015) 3D Vaccine Self-Assembles To Fight Cancer and Infectious Disease. 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 (1992) NASA Space Suits., 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

Ringberg J. E. (2012) Daily life at Cerro León, an Early Intermediate period highland settlement in the Moche Valley, Peru. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina.

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

St. John Kelly E. (1998) Teaching Doctors Sensitivity On the Most Sensitive of Exams. New York Times, F7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fusi, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Fusi, 2008; Zhu and Tromp, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Zhu and Tromp, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Vasanthi et al., 2013)

About the journal

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