How to format your references using the Journal of Paleontology citation style

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

Walther, G.-R., 2007, Ecology. Tackling ecological complexity in climate impact research: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 315, p. 606–607.

A journal article with 2 authors

Walker, A.W., and Parkhill, J., 2013, Microbiology. Fighting obesity with bacteria: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 341, p. 1069–1070.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kärkäs, M.D., Matsuura, B.S., and Stephenson, C.R.J., 2015, ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. Enchained by visible light-mediated photoredox catalysis: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 349, p. 1285–1286.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lipton, A.J., Johnson, M.A., Macdonald, T., Lieberman, M.W., Gozal, D., and Gaston, B., 2001, S-nitrosothiols signal the ventilatory response to hypoxia: Nature, v. 413, p. 171–174.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Boillot, M., 2014, Advanced Smart Grids for Distribution System Operators: Volume 1: Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., .

An edited book

2008, Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: 11th Pacific Rim International Conference on Multi-Agents, PRIMA 2008, Hanoi, Vietnam, December 15-16, 2008. Proceedings (Bui, T.D., Ho, T.V., and Ha, Q.T., eds.): Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, XIV, 406 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Idowu, M.O., 2015, Pathologists’ Roles in Molecular Oncology Testing of Solid Tumors, in Idowu, M.O., Dumur, C.I., and Garrett, C.T., eds., Molecular Oncology Testing for Solid Tumors: A Pragmatic Approach: Cham, Springer International Publishing, p. 139–152.

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 Paleontology.

Blog post

Hamilton, K., 2016, Underwater Robots Help Scientists See Where Marine Larvae Go And How They Get There. IFLScience. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/technology/underwater-robots-help-scientists-see-where-marine-larvae-go-and-how-they-get-there/. Accessed October 30, 2018 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, 1990, Social Security: Service to the Public--Accuracy of the 800 Phone Service: Washington, DC, 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

Klein, K.A., 2009, Vocabulary acquisition via cross-situational learning [Doctoral dissertation]: Bloomington, IN, Indiana 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

Bogdanich, W., 2017, The Sheriff’s War: New York Times, p. A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Walther 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Walther 2007; Walker and Parkhill 2013).

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

Two authors: (Walker and Parkhill 2013)
Three or more authors: (Lipton et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Paleontology
Abbreviation	J. Paleontol.
ISSN (print)	0022-3360
ISSN (online)	1937-2337
Scope	Palaeontology