How to format your references using the Geophysical Research Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geophysical Research Letters. 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

O’Keeffe, M. (2002). Edge effects. Nature, 419(6902), 28–29.

A journal article with 2 authors

Blander, J. M., & Medzhitov, R. (2006). Toll-dependent selection of microbial antigens for presentation by dendritic cells. Nature, 440(7085), 808–812.

A journal article with 3 authors

Stinchcombe, J., Bossi, G., & Griffiths, G. M. (2004). Linking albinism and immunity: the secrets of secretory lysosomes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5680), 55–59.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Tsukamoto, S., Hara, T., Yamamoto, A., Kito, S., Minami, N., Kubota, T., et al. (2014). Fluorescence-based visualization of autophagic activity predicts mouse embryo viability. Scientific Reports, 4, 4533.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Karlson, B., Bria, A., Lind, J., Lönnqvist, P., & Norlin, C. (2005). Wireless Foresight. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Wang, L. (Ed.). (2012). Modeling and Control of Sustainable Power Systems: Towards Smarter and Greener Electric Grids. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Bittermann, D., & Fischer, M. (2011). Development and Design of the EPR^TM Core Catcher. In T. Saito, J. Yamashita, Y. Oka, & Y. Ishiwatari (Eds.), Advances in Light Water Reactor Technologies (pp. 119–142). New York, NY: Springer.

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 Geophysical Research Letters.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, June 1). Health Check: Can Your Brain Be ‘Full’? Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/brain/health-check-can-your-brain-be-full/

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. (2012). NASA: Earned Value Management Implementation across Major Spaceflight Projects Is Uneven (No. GAO-13-22). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Taboada-Peña, R. (2017). A Self-Empowering Holistic Art-Based Model Designed to Promote Emotional Well-Being, Coping Skills, and Self-Esteem in Youth (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kelly, K., & Rappeport, A. (2017, May 19). Goldman Sachs Veteran Withdraws From Nomination to Treasury. New York Times, p. B6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (O’Keeffe, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Blander & Medzhitov, 2006; O’Keeffe, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Blander & Medzhitov, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Tsukamoto et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geophysical Research Letters
Abbreviation	Geophys. Res. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0094-8276
ISSN (online)	1944-8007
Scope	General Earth and Planetary Sciences Geophysics