How to format your references using the International Journal of Coal Geology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Coal Geology. 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

Wadman, M., 2005. Path to approval proves rocky for copycat biodrugs. Nature 438, 154–155.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sedda, L., Rogers, D.J., 2013. The influence of the wind in the Schmallenberg virus outbreak in Europe. Sci. Rep. 3, 3361.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alben, S., Shelley, M., Zhang, J., 2002. Drag reduction through self-similar bending of a flexible body. Nature 420, 479–481.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Du, J., Cheng, F., Wang, S., Zhang, T., Chen, J., 2014. M(salen)-derived nitrogen-doped M/C (M = Fe, Co, Ni) porous nanocomposites for electrocatalytic oxygen reduction. Sci. Rep. 4, 4386.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gordon, M.E., 2009. Trump University Entrepreneurship 101. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Jackson, M.B., Mookherjee, S., Hamlin, N.P. (Eds.), 2015. The Perioperative Medicine Consult Handbook, Second Edition. ed. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Ananchuen, N., Ananchuen, W., Plummer, M.D., 2011. Domination in Graphs, in: Dehmer, M. (Ed.), Structural Analysis of Complex Networks. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, pp. 73–104.

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 International Journal of Coal Geology.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Fly Over Pluto With This Animated Video From NASA’s New Horizons [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/fly-over-pluto-animated-video-nasas-new-horizons/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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. Highway Safety: Reliability and Validity of DOT Crash Tests (No. PEMD-95-5). 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

Chen, A.P., 2008. An efficient algorithm for calculating fluctuation field and simulating the thermal magnetic aftereffect (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Detrick, B., 2016. Paul’s Casablanca. New York Times D9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wadman, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Sedda and Rogers, 2013; Wadman, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Sedda and Rogers, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Du et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Coal Geology
Abbreviation	Int. J. Coal Geol.
ISSN (print)	0166-5162
Scope	Economic Geology Geology Stratigraphy Fuel Technology