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

Spence JCH (2003) Materials science. Oxygen in crystals--seeing is believing. Science 299:839–841

A journal article with 2 authors

Dawson RI, Chiang E (2014) A class of warm Jupiters with mutually inclined, apsidally misaligned close friends. Science 346:212–216

A journal article with 3 authors

Bao H, Yu S, Tong DQ (2010) Massive volcanic SO(2) oxidation and sulphate aerosol deposition in Cenozoic North America. Nature 465:909–912

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Grillmair CJ, Burrows A, Charbonneau D, et al (2008) Strong water absorption in the dayside emission spectrum of the planet HD 189733b. Nature 456:767–769

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bromfield R (2010) Doing Therapy with Children and Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Zajda J, Gamage DT (eds) (2009) Decentralisation, School-Based Management, and Quality. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Brzostowski K, Rekuć W, Sobecki J, Szczurowski L (2010) Service Discovery in the SOA System. In: Nguyen NT, Le MT, Świątek J (eds) Intelligent Information and Database Systems: Second International Conference, ACIIDS, Hue City, Vietnam, March 24-26, 2010. Proceedings, Part II. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 29–38

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

Andrew E (2015) Coffee Might Help You Live Longer. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/coffee-even-decaf-might-help-you-live-longer/. 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 (2008) Digital Television Transition: Implementation of the Converter Box Subsidy Program Is Under Way, but Preparedness to Manage an Increase in Subsidy Demand Is Unclear. 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

Dimick E (2015) A Comparative Study on Pheromone Communication between Schizophyllum species. 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

Pilon M (2014) Judging Draws Renewed Scrutiny. New York Times B15

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Spence 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Spence 2003; Dawson and Chiang 2014).

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

Two authors: (Dawson and Chiang 2014)
Three or more authors: (Grillmair et al. 2008)

About the journal

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