How to format your references using the Geological Society of America Bulletin citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Geological Society of America Bulletin. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Lehmann, F.O., 2001, Matching spiracle opening to metabolic need during flight in Drosophila: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 294, p. 1926–1929.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ruths, J., and Ruths, D., 2014, Network models. Response to Comment on “Control profiles of complex networks”: Science (New York, N.Y.), v. 346, p. 561.

A journal article with 3 authors

Miake, J., Marbán, E., and Nuss, H.B., 2002, Biological pacemaker created by gene transfer: Nature, v. 419, p. 132–133.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Ding, B.-S. et al., 2010, Inductive angiocrine signals from sinusoidal endothelium are required for liver regeneration: Nature, v. 468, p. 310–315.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vanclef, J., 2013, The Wealth Code 2.0: Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Selin, H., and Davey, G. (Eds.), 2012, Happiness Across Cultures: Views of Happiness and Quality of Life in Non-Western Cultures: Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, Science Across Cultures: the History of Non-Western Science, v. 6, XXIV, 504 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Fletcher, A.J., Kennedy, M.J., Zhao, X.B., Bell, J.B., and Thomas, K.M., 2008, Adsorption of Organic Vapour Pollutants on Activated Carbon, in Mota, J.P. and Lyubchik, S. eds., Recent Advances in Adsorption Processes for Environmental Protection and Security, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security, p. 29–54.

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 Geological Society of America Bulletin.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014, Scientists Warn We Are Approaching The Next Mass Extinction: IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-warn-we-are-approaching-next-mass-extinction/ (accessed 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, 2014, NASA: Actions Needed to Improve Transparency and Assess Long-Term Affordability of Human Exploration Programs: U.S. Government Printing Office GAO-14-385.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ploehs, J.R., 2009, The literacy benefits of middle school tutors who tutor emergent readers [Doctoral dissertation]: University of Cincinnati.

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

Cox, R., Lee, L., Maharg-Bravo, F., and Hay, G., 2011, Dunkin’ Offers A Bubble Lesson: New York Times, p. B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lehmann, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Lehmann, 2001; Ruths and Ruths, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Ruths and Ruths, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Ding et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geological Society of America Bulletin
Abbreviation	Geol. Soc. Am. Bull.
ISSN (print)	0016-7606
Scope	Geology