How to format your references using the Geological Society, London, Special Publications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geological Society, London, Special Publications. 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

Rouault, T.A. 2006. Biochemistry. If the RNA fits, use it. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314, 1886–1887.

A journal article with 2 authors

Strome, S. and Lehmann, R. 2007. Germ versus soma decisions: lessons from flies and worms. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316, 392–393.

A journal article with 3 authors

Coplan, P.M., Mitchnick, M. and Rosenberg, Z.F. 2004. Public health. Regulatory challenges in microbicide development. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304, 1911–1912.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Du, Z., Munye, M.M., Tagalakis, A.D., Manunta, M.D.I. and Hart, S.L. 2014. The role of the helper lipid on the DNA transfection efficiency of lipopolyplex formulations. Scientific reports, 4, 7107.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lenk, R. and Lenk, C. 2011. Practical Lighting Design With LEDs.

An edited book

Stojmenovic, I., Cheng, Z. and Guo, S. (eds). 2014. Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services: 10th International Conference, MOBIQUITOUS 2013, Tokyo, Japan, December 2-4, 2013, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

A chapter in an edited book

Arrowsmith, J. 2013. Severe Hand Injuries. In: Chick, G. (ed.) Acute and Chronic Finger Injuries in Ball Sports. 125–142.

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 Geological Society, London, Special Publications.

Blog post

Fang, J. 2015. The Days on Saturn Just Got Shorter. 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. 1975. Department of Labor’s Past and Future Role in Offender Rehabilitation. MWD-75-91.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Harper, T. 2010. Going Public, Staying Private, and Everything in Between. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona.

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

Rothenberg, B. 2017. Young Stars Climb Rankings, Jolting Russia’s Dormant Men’s Game to Life. New York Times, B9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rouault 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Rouault 2006; Strome and Lehmann 2007).

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

Two authors: (Strome and Lehmann 2007)
Three or more authors: (Du et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geological Society, London, Special Publications
Abbreviation	Geol. Soc. Spec. Publ.
ISSN (print)	0305-8719
ISSN (online)	2041-4927
Scope	Geology Ocean Engineering Water Science and Technology