How to format your references using the International Journal of Coal Geology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Coal 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	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

Pearse, J.S., 2006. Ecological role of purple sea urchins. Science 314, 940–941.

A journal article with 2 authors

Stephens, D.J., Allan, V.J., 2003. Light microscopy techniques for live cell imaging. Science 300, 82–86.

A journal article with 3 authors

Waghmare, P.R., Gunda, N.S.K., Mitra, S.K., 2014. Under-water superoleophobicity of fish scales. Sci. Rep. 4, 7454.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Voiculescu, O., Bertocchini, F., Wolpert, L., Keller, R.E., Stern, C.D., 2007. The amniote primitive streak is defined by epithelial cell intercalation before gastrulation. Nature 449, 1049–1052.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gowler, D.B., 2013. James Through the Centuries. John Wiley & Sons, Oxford.

An edited book

Scheffers, A.M., 2016. Lakes of the World with Google Earth: Understanding our Environment, Coastal Research Library. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Canuto, C., Tabacco, A., 2015. Local comparison of functions. Numerical sequences and series, in: Tabacco, A. (Ed.), Mathematical Analysis I, UNITEXT. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 123–168.

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 International Journal of Coal Geology.

Blog post

Hale, T., 2017. Scientists Hope To Bring Giant Galapagos Tortoise Back From Extinction [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, 2007. Federal Aviation Administration: Key Issues in Ensuring the Efficient Development and Safe Operation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (No. GAO-07-636T). 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

Wick, H.F., 2001. Applying Natural Horn Technique to Modern Valved Horn Performance Practice (Doctoral dissertation). Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Dynarski, S., 2016. America Can Fix Its Student Loan Crisis. Ask Australia. New York Times BU6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pearse, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Pearse, 2006; Stephens and Allan, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Stephens and Allan, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Voiculescu et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Coal Geology
Abbreviation	Int. J. Coal Geol.
ISSN (print)	0166-5162
Scope	Economic Geology Geology Stratigraphy Fuel Technology