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:

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
Keller, R., 2012. Developmental biology. Physical biology returns to morphogenesis. Science 338, 201–203.
A journal article with 2 authors
Briffa, K.R., Osborn, T.J., 2002. Paleoclimate. Blowing hot and cold. Science 295, 2227–2228.
A journal article with 3 authors
Haerizadeh, F., Singh, M.B., Bhalla, P.L., 2006. Transcriptional repression distinguishes somatic from germ cell lineages in a plant. Science 313, 496–499.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Lee, W., Jiang, Z., Liu, J., Haverty, P.M., Guan, Y., Stinson, J., Yue, P., Zhang, Y., Pant, K.P., Bhatt, D., Ha, C., Johnson, S., Kennemer, M.I., Mohan, S., Nazarenko, I., Watanabe, C., Sparks, A.B., Shames, D.S., Gentleman, R., de Sauvage, F.J., Stern, H., Pandita, A., Ballinger, D.G., Drmanac, R., Modrusan, Z., Seshagiri, S., Zhang, Z., 2010. The mutation spectrum revealed by paired genome sequences from a lung cancer patient. Nature 465, 473–477.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Posudin, Y., 2014. Methods of Measuring Environmental Parameters. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Bombardieri, E., Gianni, L., Bonadonna, G. (Eds.), 2008. Breast Cancer: Nuclear Medicine in Diagnosis and Therapeutic Options. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Schierwater, B., Kamm, K., 2010. The Early Evolution of Hox Genes: A Battle of Belief?, in: Deutsch, J.S. (Ed.), Hox Genes: Studies from the 20th to the 21st Century, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 81–90.

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., 2016. Academics Need To Embrace New Ways Of Writing And Sharing Research [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 1992. Parent and Supplemental Student Loans: Volume and Default Trends for Fiscal Years 1989 to 1991 (No. HRD-92-138FS). 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
Hakes, C.J., 2010. Off -campus work and its relationship to students’ experiences with faculty using the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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
(nyt), S.K., 2001. World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Chechnya Death Toll. New York Times A8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Keller, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Briffa and Osborn, 2002; Keller, 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Briffa and Osborn, 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Lee et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal titleInternational Journal of Coal Geology
AbbreviationInt. J. Coal Geol.
ISSN (print)0166-5162
ScopeEconomic Geology
Geology
Stratigraphy
Fuel Technology

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