GEOG/ES&P 330

California Ecosystems

How to cite materials in your reference list

Most journals in most sciences use some variant of the parenthetical citation system these days. This is sometimes called the chemical system (it started in some chemistry journal to save on typesetting costs) or the Harvard system. The American Chemical Society uses it, as does the American Psychological Association, and I'm mentioning those two because there are detailed ACS and APA guides around. Maddeningly, each journal has its own very specific versions of this, and you have to look up its specific style sheet whenever you prepare manuscripts for them to consider publishing. So, here's the Rodrigue-specific version for your quick reference pleasure:

Arrange the list alphabetically by author's (or lead author's) family name.

If it's a journal article, you'd use this format:

Jones, C. 2012. Article about an interesting weed in the Santa Monica Mountains.      
     Journal of Some Pretty Interesting Plants 14, 2: 235-239.  

That is, author family name first. Comma. Initial(s). Period. Year. Period. Article name in sentence format (capitalize first word and proper names/place names). Period. Name of Journal (with all major words capitalized and the whole journal's name italicized) no period and no comma volume. Comma. Number (if more than one issues appears each year). Colon. Page numbers. Period. And use hanging indentation (where the first line begins at the far left margin and the reference wraps into an indented block.

If it's an article in an anthology, that is, a chapter in an edited book (and I'll use three authors this time):

Jones, C.; Smith, J.D.; and Gonzalez-Sanchez, M.T. 2017. On the ideological
     ramifications of declaring a plant species a "weed." In Title of Book about 
     Things to Know about Vegetation Management Policy, ed. O.L. Ling and M.N.
     Ndebele, pp. 45-62. New York and Los Angeles:  Arcane Publishing House.  

That would be last name comma initial(s) of first author. Semi-colon (so you don't get confused with the commas within each author's name). Last name comma initial(s) of second author. Semi-colon. And Last name comma initial(s) of last author. Period. Year. Name of chapter in sentence case (only first word, proper names, and place names start with capitals). In italicized name of book with all major words capitalized. Comma, pp. page numbers. Period. Name of city or cities in which book was published. Colon. Name of publishing house.

If it's a book, it comes out:

Sandhu, C.M. 2001.  A Book Extolling the Virtues of Weeds.  Columbus, OH: 
     Vanity Press International.

That is: last name. Comma. Initial(s). Period. Year. Period. Book title with all important words capitalized. City (and state or country if you suspect your readers don't know where Columbus is). Colon. Publishing House.

If it's a paper presented to a scientific conference, it would look like:

Schmo, C., and Bloe, J. 2016.  Invasive weeds:  Key to terraforming Mars? Presentation 
     to the Association of American Astrobiogeographers, Pasadena, CA (14 May).

That would be last name comma initial(s) of first author. If there is only one other co-author, use a comma followed by and to separate the names. Last name comma initial(s) of second author. Period. Year. Period. Title of presentation. Period. Presentation to Name of Conference (with important words capitalized), comma, city and state (or country) where conference was held that year. If you have the date of the presentation, include it in parentheses right after the city and state or country. Period.

What about a web page?

Dayah, M.  1997.  Dynamic periodic table.  Available at: http://www.ptable.com (last accessed 
     04/02/17).

This one, by the way, is real. Try to identify an author, a year, and a title, just as you would with other resources. Unfortunately, a lot of web auteurs are a little cavalier about providing the information with which you can give them credit (what are they thinking?). Do the best you can. With this site, I had to rummage around, and I found helpful information on the About link. For some reason, the increasingly common custom is to add in a reference to the last date on which you accessed the site, which hits me as singularly uninformative and a bit silly. I guess that establishes that the site was working as late as your access date? (but, Professor, I swear it was working a week ago!). When a site goes 404 on you, by the way, I've sometimes been able to find it on the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive (last accessed :-), 04/02/17, sorry, couldn't help it), so, knowing that I can find the time frame in which a site was active, this "last accessed" thing really seems absurd, but it is the custom that's gelling out there in Citation Reference Land.

Here is a generally useful resource on writing mechanics (ignore the Page Not Found message: The two sources are listed right below that!) NASA Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Program. It was working 04/02/17.

• McCaskill, Mary K. 1990. Grammary, Punctuation, and Capitalization: A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors. Washington, DC: NASA.
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 2005. NASA Publications Guide for Authors. NASA/SP--2005-7602 (Rev. 1). Hanover, MD: NASA Center for AeroSpace Information, and Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service.

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Document maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
First placed on web: 02/02/16
Last revision: 11/01/18