How to format your references using the Journal of the Geological Society of London citation style

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

Brenner, S. 2012. History of science. The revolution in the life sciences. Science (New York, N.Y.), 338, 1427–1428.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barkai, N. and Leibler, S. 2000. Circadian clocks limited by noise. Nature, 403, 267–268.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lu, Y., Wang, W. and Kirschner, M.W. 2015. Specificity of the anaphase-promoting complex: a single-molecule study. Science (New York, N.Y.), 348, 1248737.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Sternberg, A., Gal-Yam, A., et al. 2011. Circumstellar material in type Ia supernovae via sodium absorption features. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333, 856–859.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blair, R. and Regenstein, J.M. 2015. Genetic Modification and Food Quality.

An edited book

Boden, F., Lawson, N., Jentink, H.W. and Kompenhans, J. (eds). 2013. Advanced In-Flight Measurement Techniques. Research Topics in Aerospace.

A chapter in an edited book

Lokuciejewski, P. and Marwedel, P. 2011. WCET-Aware Source Code Level Optimizations. In: Marwedel, P. (ed.) Worst-Case Execution Time Aware Compilation Techniques for Real-Time Systems. Embedded Systems, 61–129.

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 the Geological Society of London.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2015. Newly Discovered Glass Frog Looks Just Like Kermit! IFLSciencehttps://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/kermits-species-revealed/.

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. 1996. Energy Research: Recovery of Federal Investment in Technology Development Projects. T-RCED-96-225.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Faynblut, V. 2016. College Access: A Case Study of Latino Charter School Students and Their K-16 Pathways. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine 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

Hodara, S. 2016. Where Paintings Have Overtaken Pixels. New York Times, CT9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brenner 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Barkai and Leibler 2000; Brenner 2012).

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

Two authors: (Barkai and Leibler 2000)
Three or more authors: (Sternberg et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of the Geological Society of London
Abbreviation	J. Geol. Soc. London
ISSN (print)	0016-7649
ISSN (online)	2041-479X
Scope	Geology

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