How to format your references using the The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics. 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 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

Buiter, Susanne. 2014. Geodynamics: How plumes help to break plates. Nature 513: 36–37.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhou, Zhonghe, and Fucheng Zhang. 2004. A precocial avian embryo from the Lower Cretaceous of China. Science (New York, N.Y.) 306: 653.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sobolev, A. V., A. W. Hofmann, and I. K. Nikogosian. 2000. Recycled oceanic crust observed in “ghost plagioclase” within the source of Mauna Loa lavas. Nature 404: 986–990.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Falci, G., R. Fazio, G. M. Palma, J. Siewert, and V. Vedral V. 2000. Detection of geometric phases in superconducting nanocircuits. Nature 407: 355–358.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pérez Fontán, F., and P. Mariño Espiñeira. 2008. Modeling the Wireless Propagation Channel. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Yuan, Xiao-Zi. 2010. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy in PEM Fuel Cells: Fundamentals and Applications. Edited by Chaojie Song, Haijiang Wang, and Jiujun Zhang. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Tzanakis, Ioannis P., and Dimitrios G. Oreopoulos. 2013. Magnesium and Kidney Disease. In Magnesium in Human Health and Disease, ed. Ronald Ross Watson, Victor R. Preedy, and Sherma Zibadi, 81–101. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

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 The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2014. Embryonic Stem Cells Show Promise As MS Treatment In Mice. IFLScience. IFLScience. June 17.

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. 1979. Army’s FY 1980 Programs for Procuring Conventional Ammunition, Modernization, and Expansion. LCD-79-416. 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

Lotrecchiano, Gaetano Romano. 2012. Social Mechanisms of Team Science: A Descriptive Case Study Using a Multilevel Systems Perspective Employing Reciprocating Structuration Theory. Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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

Feeney, Kelly. 2008. Cuban Comfort. New York Times, November 9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Buiter 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Zhou and Zhang 2004; Buiter 2014).

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

Two authors: (Zhou and Zhang 2004)
Three or more authors: (Falci et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics
ISSN (print)	1383-4924
ISSN (online)	1572-8552
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Linguistics and Language