How to format your references using the Precambrian Research citation style

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

Macilwain, C., 2015. The future of science will soon be upon us. Nature 524, 137.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ebert, D.H., Greenberg, M.E., 2013. Activity-dependent neuronal signalling and autism spectrum disorder. Nature 493, 327–337.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bruner, S.D., Norman, D.P., Verdine, G.L., 2000. Structural basis for recognition and repair of the endogenous mutagen 8-oxoguanine in DNA. Nature 403, 859–866.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Hornbaker, D.J., Kahng, S.J., Misra, S., Smith, B.W., Johnson, A.T., Mele, E.J., Luzzi, D.E., Yazdani, A., 2002. Mapping the one-dimensional electronic States of nanotube peapod structures. Science 295, 828–831.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Matthews, G.A., 2015. Pesticides. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Stark, M.M. (Ed.), 2005. Clinical Forensic Medicine: A Physician’s Guide, Second Edition. ed, Forensic Science and Medicine. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ.

A chapter in an edited book

Santos, L.D., Martins, I., 2013. The Monitoring System on Quality of Life of the City of Porto, in: Sirgy, M.J., Phillips, R., Rahtz, D. (Eds.), Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases VI. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 77–98.

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 Precambrian Research.

Blog post

Andrews, R., 2016. “Stone Age” Of The Macaques Dates Back Half A Century [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2006. Hurricane Katrina: Army Corps of Engineers Contract for Mississippi Classrooms (No. GAO-06-454). 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

Pavuluri, V.K., 2014. Field Oriented Control of Induction Motors Based on DSP Controller (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Walsh, M.W., 2015. Cracks Starting to Appear in Public Pensions’ Armor. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Ebert and Greenberg, 2013; Macilwain, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Ebert and Greenberg, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Hornbaker et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Precambrian Research
Abbreviation	Precambrian Res.
ISSN (print)	0301-9268
Scope	Geochemistry and Petrology Geology