How to format your references using the Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems. 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

Heath, M. R.: Comment on “A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems,” Science, 321, 1446; author reply 1446, 2008.

A journal article with 2 authors

Melnik, D. G. and Miller, T. A.: Chemistry. The changing shapes of molecules, Science, 320, 881–882, 2008.

A journal article with 3 authors

Fendorf, S., Michael, H. A., and van Geen, A.: Spatial and temporal variations of groundwater arsenic in South and Southeast Asia, Science, 328, 1123–1127, 2010.

A journal article with 100 or more authors

Li, Y. B., Wan, X., Cai, B. G., Cheng, Q., and Cui, T. J.: Frequency-controls of electromagnetic multi-beam scanning by metasurfaces, Sci. Rep., 4, 6921, 2014.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Raynaud, H. and Arrow, K. J.: Managerial Logic, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2011.

An edited book

Montijano, E.: Distributed Consensus with Visual Perception in Multi-Robot Systems, edited by: Sagüés, C., Springer International Publishing, Cham, XII, 159 p. 46 illus. in color pp., 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Banerjee, S. and Moses, M. E.: A Hybrid Agent Based and Differential Equation Model of Body Size Effects on Pathogen Replication and Immune System Response, in: Artificial Immune Systems: 8th International Conference, ICARIS 2009, York, UK, August 9-12, 2009. Proceedings, edited by: Andrews, P. S., Timmis, J., Owens, N. D. L., Aickelin, U., Hart, E., Hone, A., and Tyrrell, A. M., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 14–18, 2009.

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 Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems.

Blog post

Scientists Create “Evolved” Protein That Stops Cancer Spreading In Mice: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-create-evolved-protein-stops-cancer-spreading-mice/, last access: 30 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: NASA: Assessments of Selected Large-Scale Projects [Reissued on March 26, 2015], U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ghadimian, V.: Renewable Energy Marketplace, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2017.

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

Joy, S.: Bags That Don’t Brag, New York Times, 25th September, E17, 2014.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Heath, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Heath, 2008; Melnik and Miller, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Melnik and Miller, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems
ISSN (print)	2193-0856
ISSN (online)	2193-0864
Scope	Atmospheric Science Geology Oceanography