How to format your references using the Geoscience Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geoscience 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	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

Marder SR (2014) Perspective: Retreat from the radical. Nature 508:S18

A journal article with 2 authors

McGuire JJ, Beroza GC (2012) Geophysics. A rogue earthquake off Sumatra. Science 336:1118–1119

A journal article with 3 authors

Bettencourt LMA, Samaniego H, Youn H (2014) Professional diversity and the productivity of cities. Sci Rep 4:5393

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Lobino M, Korystov D, Kupchak C, et al (2008) Complete characterization of quantum-optical processes. Science 322:563–566

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tagliamonte SA (2015) Making Waves. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Puoci F (ed) (2015) Advanced Polymers in Medicine. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Raoprasert T, Islam SMN (2010) Methodology, Research Process, and Computer Programs. In: Islam SMN (ed) Designing an Efficient Management System: Modeling of Convergence Factors Exemplified by the Case of Japanese Businesses in Thailand. Physica-Verlag HD, Heidelberg, pp 63–94

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 Geoscience Letters.

Blog post

Luntz S (2017) Youngest Class Members At Greatest Risk Of ADHD Over-Diagnosis. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1995) Charter Schools: New Model for Public Schools Provides Opportunities and Challenges. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Mills J (2017) Catherine of Siena: No Saint Is an Island. 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

Gorman J (2016) Figaro, the Toolmaking Cockatoo. New York Times D3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marder 2014).
This sentence cites two references (McGuire and Beroza 2012; Marder 2014).

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

Two authors: (McGuire and Beroza 2012)
Three or more authors: (Lobino et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geoscience Letters
Abbreviation	Geosci. Lett.
ISSN (online)	2196-4092
Scope