How to format your references using the Geological Society of America Bulletin citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geological Society of America Bulletin. 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

Smithies, O., 2010, Science brick by brick: Nature, v. 467, p. S6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kmita, M., and Duboule, D., 2003, Organizing axes in time and space; 25 years of colinear tinkering: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 301, p. 331–333.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cox, D., Meyers, E., and Sinha, P., 2004, Contextually evoked object-specific responses in human visual cortex: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 304, p. 115–117.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

O’Donnell, K.A., Wentzel, E.A., Zeller, K.I., Dang, C.V., and Mendell, J.T., 2005, c-Myc-regulated microRNAs modulate E2F1 expression: Nature, v. 435, p. 839–843.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morrow, E., Boaz, A., Brearley, S., and Ross, F., 2011, Handbook of Service User Involvement in Nursing and Healthcare Research: Oxford, UK, Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Russell, C.T. (Ed.), 2009, New Horizons: Reconnaissance of the Pluto-Charon System and the Kuiper Belt: New York, NY, Springer, IV, 402 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Lemos, J.M., and Sampaio, I., 2015, Distributed LQG Control for Multiobjective Control of Water Canals, in Ocampo-Martinez, C. and Negenborn, R.R. eds., Transport of Water versus Transport over Water: Exploring the Dynamic Interplay of Transport and Water, Cham, Springer International Publishing, Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series, p. 59–73.

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 of America Bulletin.

Blog post

Luntz, S., 2014, Smoking During Pregnancy Could Affect Your Grandchildren’s Growth: IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/smoking-during-pregnancy-could-affect-your-grandchildrens-growth/ (accessed 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, 1989, Department of Education: Management of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services: U.S. Government Printing Office HRD-90-21BR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sowers, P.A., 2012, “Klanaheim”: Suburbia, civic identity, and the second Ku Klux Klan [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

Chozick, A., 2013, Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionare: New York Times, p. MM28.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smithies, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Kmita and Duboule, 2003; Smithies, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Kmita and Duboule, 2003)
Three or more authors: (O’Donnell et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geological Society of America Bulletin
Abbreviation	Geol. Soc. Am. Bull.
ISSN (print)	0016-7606
Scope	Geology