How to format your references using the Journal of Geographical Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Geographical 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Greenspan NS (2001) You can’t have it all. Nature 409:137
A journal article with 2 authors
Bianco PR, Kowalczykowski SC (2000) Translocation step size and mechanism of the RecBC DNA helicase. Nature 405:368–372
A journal article with 3 authors
Rau AV, Dunningham JA, Burnett K (2003) Measurement-induced relative-position localization through entanglement. Science 301:1081–1084
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Schmidt DN, Thierstein HR, Bollmann J, Schiebel R (2004) Abiotic forcing of plankton evolution in the Cenozoic. Science 303:207–210

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Chevallier J, Ielpo F (2013) The Economics of Commodity Markets. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
Nagata Y (ed) (2015) Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy: Principles and Practices. Springer Japan, Tokyo
A chapter in an edited book
Beck J (2016) Part of the Family: Age, Identity, and Burial in Copper Age Iberia. In: Osterholtz AJ (ed) Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 47–73

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 Journal of Geographical Systems.

Blog post
Fang J (2014) Bizarre 505-Million-Year-Old Spiky Worm Has Living Descendants. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/bizarre-505-million-year-old-spiky-worm-has-living-descendants/. 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 (1983) Vocational Education and the Robotics Revolution. 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
Litt D (2010) Social networking sites and adolescent alcohol use: The role of social images, social norms, and social comparison. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington 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
Greenhouse L (2006) Justices to Say When Police Can Enter Private Home. New York Times A12

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Greenspan 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Bianco and Kowalczykowski 2000; Greenspan 2001).

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

  • Two authors: (Bianco and Kowalczykowski 2000)
  • Three or more authors: (Schmidt et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Geographical Systems
AbbreviationJ. Geogr. Syst.
ISSN (print)1435-5930
ISSN (online)1435-5949
ScopeEarth-Surface Processes
Geography, Planning and Development

Other styles