How to format your references using the Geophysical Research Letters citation style

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

Harmon, L. (2010). Journal club. An evolutionary biologist ponders the pace of evolution. Nature, 463(7284), 1003.

A journal article with 2 authors

Paczolt, K. A., & Jones, A. G. (2010). Post-copulatory sexual selection and sexual conflict in the evolution of male pregnancy. Nature, 464(7287), 401–404.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pollack, S. E., Dries, D., & Hulet, R. G. (2009). Universality in three- and four-body bound states of ultracold atoms. Science (New York, N.Y.), 326(5960), 1683–1685.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Zou, P., Pinotsis, N., Lange, S., Song, Y.-H., Popov, A., Mavridis, I., et al. (2006). Palindromic assembly of the giant muscle protein titin in the sarcomeric Z-disk. Nature, 439(7073), 229–233.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mcphee, J. E. (2014). Mastering Strategic Risk. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Das, S. (2015). Economic Growth and Development: A Dynamic Dual Economy Approach. (A. Mourmouras & P. C. Rangazas, Eds.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Gamlem, S. M. (2015). Feedback in the Mentoring of Teacher Learning. In H. Tillema, G. J. van der Westhuizen, & K. Smith (Eds.), Mentoring for Learning: “Climbing the Mountain” (pp. 79–97). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 Geophysical Research Letters.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2016, June 20). Patagonia Proves Extinctions Down to Both Hunting And Climate Change. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/patagonia-proves-extinctions-down-to-both-hunting-and-climate-change/

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. (1987). Rail Abandonments: Abandonment Activity and Shipper Views on Rail Service Loss (No. RCED-87-82). 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

Nelson, P. T. (2008). Sound as a gateway to a personal relationship with nature (Doctoral dissertation). Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2006, March 21). Justices Weigh In on Use Of Tapes and Transcripts. New York Times, p. A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Harmon, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Harmon, 2010; Paczolt & Jones, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Paczolt & Jones, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Zou et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Geophysical Research Letters
Abbreviation	Geophys. Res. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0094-8276
ISSN (online)	1944-8007
Scope	General Earth and Planetary Sciences Geophysics