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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Journal of Geology. 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

Hall, A. 2014. Climate. Projecting regional change. Science (New York, N.Y.), 346, 1461–1462.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mellars, P. and French, J.C. 2011. Tenfold population increase in Western Europe at the Neandertal-to-modern human transition. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333, 623–627.

A journal article with 3 authors

Daubin, V., Moran, N.A. and Ochman, H. 2003. Phylogenetics and the cohesion of bacterial genomes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 301, 829–832.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Han, B.W., Herrin, B.R., Cooper, M.D. and Wilson, I.A. 2008. Antigen recognition by variable lymphocyte receptors. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321, 1834–1837.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dimond, B. 2008. Legal Aspects of Mental Capacity. Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

An edited book

Bajd, T. 2010. Robotics. Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, VIII, 152 ppp.

A chapter in an edited book

Torras, C. 2005. Natural Inspiration for Artificial Adaptivity: Some Neurocomputing Experiences in Robotics. In: C.S. Calude, M.J. Dinneen, G. Păun, M.J. Pérez-Jímenez and G. Rozenberg (Editors) Unconventional Computation: 4th International Conference, UC 2005, Sevilla, Spain, October 3 – 7, 2005. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, 32–45.

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 Journal of Geology.

Blog post

Andrew, D. 2016.What Do Aliens Look Like? The Clue Is In Evolution. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/space/what-do-aliens-look-like-the-clue-is-in-evolution/ (accessed 30 October 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 2006. Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites: Cost Increases Trigger Review and Place Program’s Direction on Hold. Washington, DC, 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

Gamez Grijalva, V.M. 2009. Biological and physical-chemical methods for treatment of semiconductor manufacturing effluents. Doctoral dissertation Thesis. Tucson, AZ, University of Arizona.

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

Yee, V. and Rosenberg, E. 2015. Fatal Brooklyn Apartment Fire Was Arson, Police Say. New York Times, A25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hall, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Mellars and French, 2011; Hall, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Mellars and French, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Han et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	South African Journal of Geology
Abbreviation	South Afr. J. Geol.
ISSN (print)	1012-0750
ISSN (online)	1996-8590
Scope	Geology