How to format your references using the Palaeontologia Electronica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Palaeontologia Electronica. 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
Vunjak-Novakovic, G. 2015. September 24. Cardiac biology: A protein for healing infarcted hearts. Nature 525:461–462.
A journal article with 2 authors
Forneris, F. and Mattevi, A. 2008. July 11. Enzymes without borders: mobilizing substrates, delivering products. Science (New York, N.Y.) 321:213–216.
A journal article with 3 authors
Renault, L., Guibert, B. and Cherfils, J. 2003. December 4. Structural snapshots of the mechanism and inhibition of a guanine nucleotide exchange factor. Nature 426:525–530.
A journal article with 99 or more authors
Snieder, R., Grêt, A., Douma, H. and Scales, J. 2002. March 22. Coda wave interferometry for estimating nonlinear behavior in seismic velocity. Science (New York, N.Y.) 295:2253–2255.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Hopkins, B.R. 2012. December 14. Starting and Managing a Nonprofit Organization. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Sassa, K., Fukuoka, H., Wang, F. and Wang, G. (Eds.). 2007. Progress in Landslide Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Kamibayashi, K. 2014. Motor Control and Learning, p. 65–88. In Sankai, Y., Suzuki, K., and Hasegawa, Y. (eds.), Cybernics: Fusion of human, machine and information systems. Springer Japan, Tokyo.

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 Palaeontologia Electronica.

Blog post
O`Callaghan, J. 2016. July 11. . IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/space/apollo-source-code-reveals-hidden-jokes/.

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. 2001. November 16. Information Technology: State Department Led Overseas Modernization Program Faces Management Challenges. 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
Bryant, D. 2012. . Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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
Kelly, S. 2003. March 9. METRO FARE. New York Times 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Vunjak-Novakovic 2015 September 24. ).
This sentence cites two references (Forneris and Mattevi 2008 July 11. ; Vunjak-Novakovic 2015 September 24. ).

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

  • Two authors: (Forneris and Mattevi 2008 July 11. )
  • Three or more authors: (Snieder et al. 2002 March 22. )

About the journal

Full journal titlePalaeontologia Electronica
AbbreviationPalaeontol. Electronica
ISSN (print)1094-8074
ISSN (online)1935-3952
ScopeOceanography

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