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

Caplan, A., 2011, Genome-sequencing anniversary. What will drive genomics over the next 10 years? Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 331, p. 691.

A journal article with 2 authors

Helms, J.A., and Schneider, R.A., 2003, Cranial skeletal biology: Nature, v. 423, p. 326–331.

A journal article with 3 authors

Froemke, R.C., Poo, M.-M., and Dan, Y., 2005, Spike-timing-dependent synaptic plasticity depends on dendritic location: Nature, v. 434, p. 221–225.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Pfeilsticker, K., Lotter, A., Peters, C., and Bosch, H., 2003, Atmospheric detection of water dimers via near-infrared absorption: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 300, p. 2078–2080.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Collier, C.G., 2016, Hydrometeorology: Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Karpouzis, K., and Yannakakis, G.N. (Eds.), 2016, Emotion in Games: Theory and Praxis: Cham, Springer International Publishing, Socio-Affective Computing, v. 4, XV, 338 p. 43 illus., 32 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Spengel, C., and Zöllkau, Y., 2012, D. Results, in Spengel, C. and Zöllkau, Y. eds., Common Corporate Tax Base (CC(C)TB) and Determination of Taxable Income: An International Comparison, Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, p. 85–98.

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., 2015, Arthropods Shrink In Warm Water But Not In Hot Air: 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, 2001, National Airspace System: Long-Term Capacity Planning Needed Despite Recent Reduction in Flight Delays: U.S. Government Printing Office GAO-02-185.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bowman, K., 2017, A Close Look at the 2014 Passage of the Illinois County School Facility Sales Tax in Greene County [Doctoral dissertation]: Southern Illinois University.

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: Russia: U.S. Asylum For Blast Survivor: New York Times, p. A6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Caplan, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Helms and Schneider, 2003; Caplan, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Helms and Schneider, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Pfeilsticker et al., 2003)

About the journal

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