How to format your references using the Ocean Science Discussions citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Ocean Science Discussions. 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
Goldstein, R. H.: Paleoenvironment. Clues from fluid inclusions, Science, 294, 1009–1011, 2001.
A journal article with 2 authors
Houweling, A. R. and Brecht, M.: Behavioural report of single neuron stimulation in somatosensory cortex, Nature, 451, 65–68, 2008.
A journal article with 3 authors
Loeffler, J. M., Nelson, D., and Fischetti, V. A.: Rapid killing of Streptococcus pneumoniae with a bacteriophage cell wall hydrolase, Science, 294, 2170–2172, 2001.
A journal article with 100 or more authors
Yang, Y., Zhang, T., Le, L., Ruan, X., Fang, P., Pan, C., Xiong, R., Shi, J., and Wei, J.: Quick and facile preparation of visible light-driven TiO2 photocatalyst with high absorption and photocatalytic activity, Sci. Rep., 4, 7045, 2014.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Anisman, H.: Stress and Your Health, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2015.
An edited book
Zheng, Q. (Ed.): Introduction to E-commerce, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 180 p. 40 illus pp., 2009.
A chapter in an edited book
Kuncheva, L. I. and Zliobaite, I.: Linear Discriminant Classifier (LDC) for Streaming Data with Concept Drift, in: Structural, Syntactic, and Statistical Pattern Recognition: Joint IAPR International Workshop, SSPR & SPR 2008, Orlando, USA, December 4-6, 2008. Proceedings, edited by: Vitoria Lobo, N. da, Kasparis, T., Roli, F., Kwok, J. T., Georgiopoulos, M., Anagnostopoulos, G. C., and Loog, M., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 4–4, 2008.

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 Ocean Science Discussions.

Blog post
Nasty Virus Makes Crickets Sterile, but Horny: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/nasty-virus-makes-crickets-sterile-horny/, last access: 30 October 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: Financial Markets: Status of Computer Improvements at the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Surges, G.: Generative Audio Systems: Musical Applications of Time-Varying Feedback Networks and Computational Aesthetics, Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 2015.

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
Stolberg, S. G. and Walsh, M. W.: Obama Offers A Transit Plan To Create Jobs, New York Times, 6th September, A1, 2010.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goldstein, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Goldstein, 2001; Houweling and Brecht, 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Houweling and Brecht, 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Yang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleOcean Science Discussions
AbbreviationOcean Sci. Discuss.
ISSN (online)1812-0822
ScopeOceanography
Palaeontology

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