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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Marine 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.
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
Michel-Kerjan, E., 2015. Effective risk response needs a prepared mindset. Nature 517, 413.
A journal article with 2 authors
Wang, Z.L., Song, J., 2006. Piezoelectric nanogenerators based on zinc oxide nanowire arrays. Science 312, 242–246.
A journal article with 3 authors
Van Roy, P., Daley, A.C., Briggs, D.E.G., 2015. Anomalocaridid trunk limb homology revealed by a giant filter-feeder with paired flaps. Nature 522, 77–80.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Madin, J.S., Alroy, J., Aberhan, M., Fürsich, F.T., Kiessling, W., Kosnik, M.A., Wagner, P.J., 2006. Statistical independence of escalatory ecological trends in Phanerozoic marine invertebrates. Science 312, 897–900.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Lebowitz, E.R., Omer, H., 2013. Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Vink, J.S. (Ed.), 2015. Very Massive Stars in the Local Universe, Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Springer International Publishing, Cham.
A chapter in an edited book
Sakadevan, K., Nguyen, M.-L., 2015. Factors Influencing Water Dynamics in Agriculture, in: Lichtfouse, E. (Ed.), Sustainable Agriculture Reviews: Volume 18, Sustainable Agriculture Reviews. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 145–180.

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 Marine Systems.

Blog post
Evans, K., 2016. First Pan-African Elephant Census Reveals Dramatic Decline Due To Poaching [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, 2012. Aviation Safety: FAA Is Taking Steps to Improve Data, but Challenges for Managing Safety Risks Remain (No. GAO-12-660T). 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
Shroff, N., 2012. Efficient sensing, summarization and classification of videos (Doctoral dissertation). University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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
Billard, M., 2010. Scouting Report. New York Times E5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Michel-Kerjan, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Michel-Kerjan, 2015; Wang and Song, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Wang and Song, 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (Madin et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Marine Systems
AbbreviationJ. Mar. Syst.
ISSN (print)0924-7963
ScopeAquatic Science
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Oceanography

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