How to format your references using the South African Geographical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Geographical Journal. 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
Strobl, M. (2014). General solution for quantitative dark-field contrast imaging with grating interferometers. Scientific Reports, 4, 7243.
A journal article with 2 authors
Sachs, J. P., & Anderson, R. F. (2005). Increased productivity in the subantarctic ocean during Heinrich events. Nature, 434(7037), 1118–1121.
A journal article with 3 authors
Frommer, W. B., Schulze, W. X., & Lalonde, S. (2003). Plant science. Hexokinase, Jack-of-all-trades. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5617), 261–263.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Jo, Y., Jung, J., Lee, J. W., Shin, D., Park, H., Nam, K. T., Park, J.-H., & Park, Y. (2014). Angle-resolved light scattering of individual rod-shaped bacteria based on Fourier transform light scattering. Scientific Reports, 4, 5090.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Wiebe, V. J. (2015). Drug Therapy for Infectious Diseases of the Dog and Cat. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Allison, S. T., Kocher, C. T., & Goethals, G. R. (Eds.). (2016). Frontiers in Spiritual Leadership: Discovering the Better Angels of Our Nature. Palgrave Macmillan US.
A chapter in an edited book
Boller, T. (2012). Experimental Evidence of a Role for RLKs in Innate Immunity. In F. Tax & B. Kemmerling (Eds.), Receptor-like Kinases in Plants: From Development to Defense (pp. 67–77). Springer.

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 South African Geographical Journal.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, October 21). Japan’s Whaling Gambit Shows It’s Time To Strengthen The Rule Of Science In Law. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/japan-s-whaling-gambit-shows-it-s-time-strengthen-rule-science-law/

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. (1978). Subcontractor’s Problems With Prime Contractor at Kennedy Space Center (B-192017). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Cox, D. C. (2008). A measurement of the neutral current neutrino-nucleon elastic cross section at MiniBooNE [Doctoral dissertation]. Indiana 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
Wagner, J. (2017, March 11). Returning for Friendship, and Drums. New York Times, SP3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Strobl, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Sachs & Anderson, 2005; Strobl, 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Sachs & Anderson, 2005)
  • Three authors: (Frommer et al., 2003)
  • 6 or more authors: (Jo et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleSouth African Geographical Journal
AbbreviationS. Afr. Geogr. J.
ISSN (print)0373-6245
ISSN (online)2151-2418
ScopeGeneral Earth and Planetary Sciences
Geography, Planning and Development

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