How to format your references using the Global Change Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Global Change Biology (GCB). 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Narasimha, R. (2004). Divide, conquer and unify. Nature, 432(7019), 807.
A journal article with 2 authors
Virshup, D. M., & Kaldis, P. (2010). Cell biology. Enforcing the Greatwall in mitosis. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6011), 1638–1639.
A journal article with 3 authors
Priola, S. A., Chesebro, B., & Caughey, B. (2003). Biomedicine. A view from the top--prion diseases from 10,000 feet. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5621), 917–919.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Alenghat, T., Meyers, K., Mullican, S. E., Leitner, K., Adeniji-Adele, A., Avila, J., Bućan, M., Ahima, R. S., Kaestner, K. H., & Lazar, M. A. (2008). Nuclear receptor corepressor and histone deacetylase 3 govern circadian metabolic physiology. Nature, 456(7224), 997–1000.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ocic, O. (2004). Oil Refineries in the 21st Century. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Nolan, G. (2014). Android Best Practices (O. Cinar & D. Truxall, Eds.). Apress.
A chapter in an edited book
Iurato, S., Martin, C., Sterkers, O., & Arnold, W. (2010). Middle Ear. In M. Anniko, M. Bernal-Sprekelsen, V. Bonkowsky, P. J. Bradley, & S. Iurato (Eds.), Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery (pp. 55–80). 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 Global Change Biology.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014, September 19). DARPA Is Developing Tiny Implants That Trigger Self-Healing. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (2003). Transmittal of Comptroller General Decision on the Transportation Security Administration’s Time and Attendance Approval System (GAO-03-532R). 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
Murillo, K. (2010). An analysis of California community college budget policy key components in multicollege districts [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine 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
Kelly, C. (2012, April 29). O.K., Google, Take a Deep Breath. New York Times, BU1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Narasimha, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Narasimha, 2004; Virshup & Kaldis, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Virshup & Kaldis, 2010)
  • Three authors: (Priola et al., 2003)
  • 6 or more authors: (Alenghat et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleGlobal Change Biology
AbbreviationGlob. Chang. Biol.
ISSN (print)1354-1013
ISSN (online)1365-2486
ScopeGeneral Environmental Science
Ecology
Environmental Chemistry
Global and Planetary Change

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