How to format your references using the Precambrian Research citation style

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

Gosden, C., 2010. Archaeology. When humans arrived in the New Guinea Highlands. Science 330, 41–42.

A journal article with 2 authors

Atkinson, T., Leeder, M., 2008. Geology. Canyon cutting on a grand time scale. Science 319, 1343–1344.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sang, L., Coller, H.A., Roberts, J.M., 2008. Control of the reversibility of cellular quiescence by the transcriptional repressor HES1. Science 321, 1095–1100.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Heil, F., Hemmi, H., Hochrein, H., Ampenberger, F., Kirschning, C., Akira, S., Lipford, G., Wagner, H., Bauer, S., 2004. Species-specific recognition of single-stranded RNA via toll-like receptor 7 and 8. Science 303, 1526–1529.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Moskowitz, H.R., Porretta, S., Silcher, M., 2008. Concept Research in Food Product Design and Development. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Chernajovsky, Y., Robbins, P.D. (Eds.), 2010. Gene Therapy for Autoimmune and Inflammatory Diseases, Milestones in Drug Therapy. Springer, Basel.

A chapter in an edited book

Lampert, A., Eberhardt, M., Waxman, S.G., 2014. Altered Sodium Channel Gating as Molecular Basis for Pain: Contribution of Activation, Inactivation, and Resurgent Currents, in: Ruben, P.C. (Ed.), Voltage Gated Sodium Channels, Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 91–110.

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 Precambrian Research.

Blog post

Carpineti, A., 2016. Meteorites Show How Dry Mars Really Is [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, 2010. Oversight of DOJ Funds for Recreational Activities (No. GAO-10-661R). 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

Fletcher, B., 2017. Tropes of Dis/Ableism as Flexible Stigma: Examining Brenda Connors’ 2008 Report as an Instance of Dis/Ableist Polemical Rhetoric (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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

Kishkovsky, S., 2015. Maya Plisetskaya, Fluid Soviet Ballerina, Dies at 89. New York Times A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gosden, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Atkinson and Leeder, 2008; Gosden, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Atkinson and Leeder, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Heil et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Precambrian Research
Abbreviation	Precambrian Res.
ISSN (print)	0301-9268
Scope	Geochemistry and Petrology Geology