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

Burrow, C.J. 2003. Comment on ‘Separate evolutionary origins of teeth from evidence in fossil jawed vertebrates’. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300, 1661; author reply 1661.

A journal article with 2 authors

Haug, G.H. and Peterson, L.C. 2006. Obituary: Nicholas Shackleton (1937-2006). Nature, 439, 928.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tay, Y., Rinn, J. and Pandolfi, P.P. 2014. The multilayered complexity of ceRNA crosstalk and competition. Nature, 505, 344–352.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Guo, P., Xiao, F., et al. 2013. One-pot microbial method to synthesize dual-doped graphene and its use as high-performance electrocatalyst. Scientific reports, 3, 3499.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cardon, A. and Itmi, M. 2016. New Autonomous Systems.

An edited book

Gould, L. and Sauther, M.L. (eds). 2007. Lemurs: Ecology and Adaptation. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospect.

A chapter in an edited book

Leach, R. 2009. Pneumonia. In: McLuckie, A. (ed.) Respiratory Disease and Its Management. Competency-Based Critical Care, 51–59.

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

Luntz, S. 2015. Birds Use Vortices For Elegant Flight. 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. 1991. Railroad Safety: Weaknesses in FRA’s Safety Program. T-RCED-91-32.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Aiken, J. 2009. Virtually a Leader: Mitigating Process Losses through Shared Team States. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.

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

Sabrina Tavernise With. 2000. For the Families, Anger Mixes With Mourning. New York Times, A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Burrow 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Burrow 2003; Haug and Peterson 2006).

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

Two authors: (Haug and Peterson 2006)
Three or more authors: (Guo et al. 2013)

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