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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Stubbe, J. 2011. April 29. Biochemistry. The two faces of SAM. Science (New York, N.Y.) 332:544–545.

A journal article with 2 authors

Clapham, P.R. and Lu, S. 2011. September 21. Vaccinology: precisely tuned antibodies nab HIV. Nature 477:416–417.

A journal article with 3 authors

Petrascheck, M., Ye, X. and Buck, L.B. 2007. November 22. An antidepressant that extends lifespan in adult Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature 450:553–556.

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Stuart, F.M., Lass-Evans, S., Fitton, J.G. and Ellam, R.M. 2003. July 3. High 3He/4He ratios in picritic basalts from Baffin Island and the role of a mixed reservoir in mantle plumes. Nature 424:57–59.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

O’Hara, B.T. and Malisow, B. 2017. May 11. CCSP® (ISC) 2® Certified Cloud Security Professional Official Study Guide. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Chen, G.G. and Lai, P.B.S. (Eds.). 2012. Novel Apoptotic Regulators in Carcinogenesis. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Kindscher, K. 2016. The Biology and Ecology of Echinacea Species, p. 47–54. In Kindscher, K. (ed.), Echinacea: Herbal Medicine with a Wild History. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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

Fang, J. 2016. May 15. . IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dung-beetles-orient-taking-snapshots-celestial-scenery/.

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. 1999. February 16. Environmental Protection: Research and Development of Plasma Arc Technology Used to Treat Hazardous Waste. 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

Schluter, K.T. 2013. . Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

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

O’connor, J. 2016. September 13. Biking Through Badlands. New York Times TR1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stubbe 2011 April 29. ).
This sentence cites two references (Stubbe 2011 April 29. ; Clapham and Lu 2011 September 21. ).

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

Two authors: (Clapham and Lu 2011 September 21. )
Three or more authors: (Stuart et al. 2003 July 3. )

About the journal

Full journal title	Palaeontologia Electronica
Abbreviation	Palaeontol. Electronica
ISSN (print)	1094-8074
ISSN (online)	1935-3952
Scope	Oceanography

Research and Writing Guides