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

Murray, N.W., 2012, Astronomy. Evidence of things not seen: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 336, p. 1121–1122.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ernst, U., and Pawelzik, K., 2011, Neuroscience. Sensible balance: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 334, p. 1507–1508.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hadders, M.A., Beringer, D.X., and Gros, P., 2007, Structure of C8alpha-MACPF reveals mechanism of membrane attack in complement immune defense: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 317, p. 1552–1554.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wahlund, J.-E. et al., 2018, In situ measurements of Saturn’s ionosphere show that it is dynamic and interacts with the rings: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 359, p. 66–68.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

MacRoberts, 2014, MacRoberts on Scottish Construction Contracts: Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Zgrzywa, A., Choroś, K., and Siemiński, A. (Eds.), 2015, New Research in Multimedia and Internet Systems: Cham, Springer International Publishing, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, v. 314, XXII, 261 p. 107 illus., 35 illus. in color p.

A chapter in an edited book

Smith, J.E.H., 2013, Heat, Action, Perception: Models of Living Beings in German Medical Cartesianism, in Dobre, M. and Nyden, T. eds., Cartesian Empiricisms, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, p. 105–123.

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, Most Psychology Papers Can’t Be Reproduced: IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/brain/most-psychology-papers-cant-be-reproduced/ (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, 2013, Building Partner Capacity: Actions Needed to Strengthen DOD Efforts to Assess the Performance of the Regional Centers for Security Studies: U.S. Government Printing Office GAO-13-606.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Barta, M.E., 2009, Culture, customer-centricity, and customer relationship management in an online postsecondary learning institution [Doctoral dissertation]: Capella 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

Greenhouse, L., 2006, In the Roberts Court, More Room for Argument: New York Times, p. A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Murray, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Ernst and Pawelzik, 2011; Murray, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Ernst and Pawelzik, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Wahlund et al., 2018)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides