How to format your references using the Planetary Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Planetary Science. 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

Dicks L (2013) Bees, lies and evidence-based policy. Nature 494:283

A journal article with 2 authors

Gelman R, Gallistel CR (2004) Language and the origin of numerical concepts. Science 306:441–443

A journal article with 3 authors

Kurth I, Georgescu RE, O’Donnell ME (2013) A solution to release twisted DNA during chromosome replication by coupled DNA polymerases. Nature 496:119–122

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wang WG, Pearse A, Li M, et al (2013) Parallel fabrication of magnetic tunnel junction nanopillars by nanosphere lithography. Sci Rep 3:1948

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lévy P (2013) The Semantic Sphere 1. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Urban C, Zhang X (2015) Interactive Theorem Proving: 6th International Conference, ITP 2015, Nanjing, China, August 24-27, 2015, Proceedings, 1st ed. 2015. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Chaudhry AM (2009) Parsimonious Modeling and Forecasting of Time Series drifted by Autoregressive Noise. In: Reiner G (ed) Rapid Modelling for Increasing Competitiveness: Tools and Mindset. Springer, London, pp 45–51

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 Planetary Science.

Blog post

Davis J (2015) Scientists Pinpoint Genes That Allow Vultures To Eat Rotting Meat. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1973) Defaulted Loans Under the Guaranteed Student Loan Program. 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

Shimizu K (2013) The Procurement System of the Japanese Space Agency: Present Challenges, Future Promise. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington 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

Williams J (2016) Disappearing Act: The Art and Fraud of Faking Your Own Death. New York Times C4

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Planetary Science
Abbreviation	Planet. Sci.
ISSN (online)	2191-2521
Scope

Research and Writing Guides