Citing Scientific Articles and Books

There are many minor variants of ways to cite scientific articles in a scientific paper.  Below are some of the more frequent situations, with the format that I prefer for each one.


Articles ("Papers") from Primary Research Journals

These journals are referred to as "the primary literature."  They publish short to medium-length articles that report new findings and have been been reviewed by "peers," that is, other, volunteer scientists familiar with the subject matter or techniques in the article.  If you're not sure about peer reviews, consult the "Directions for Submitting Papers" that are usually printed near the beginning or end of each journal issue.  The following example illustrates the format that I prefer for citing most such articles in the Bibliography or Literature Cited section at the end of other papers:

Lauritsen, D. D., S. C. Mozley, and D. S. White. 1985. Distribution of oligochaetes in Lake Michigan and comments on their use as indices of pollution. J. Great Lakes Res. 11: 67-76.

Notice that the first author's last name comes first, that only authors' initials are used, and that the authors' names are followed by a period.  Next comes the date (year only) followed by a period.  The title comes next, with just the first word and any proper nouns capitalized, and ending with a period.  The abbreviated name of the journal follows.  Each journal usually provides an example of how its title should be abbreviated, if nowhere else then in the bibliographies of papers published in it.  Find a citation of a previous article from the same journal.  Common title terms such as Journal (J.), Society (Soc.), and Research (Res.) are almost always abbreviated the same.  When unusual terms are included, they are often written out fully.  Then comes the volume number, a colon, and the inclusive page numbers.  Although most journals have an issue number and list it in parentheses after the volume number, I don't think it is necessary to give it, at all.

Whern citing articles in the text of your review, always give the author(s) and year.  One way is to give author and year in parentheses at the end of a sentence:

The most common species of oligochaete in Lake Michigan is Stylodrilus heringianus (Lauritsen, et al. 1985).

Notice that only the first author's name is actually given. The abbreviation "et al." stands for et alia, which is Latin for "and others."  It is used when there are three or more authors.  When there are two authors, the last names of both are cited:  "(Smith and Jones 1998)."  No punctuation is necessary between authors and year.

Another way is to use the authors' names as the subject of the sentence:

Lauritsen and coworkers (1985) report that Stylodrilus heringianus is the most common species of oligochaete in Lake Michigan.

Notice that the date immediately follows the author's name.

Sometimes there will be more than one article published in a given year by the same author or authors.  In that case, cite them in the text of your review by letters indicating the order in which they appear in your bibliography.  For example, suppose that Lauritsen, Mozley and White had published a second paper in 1985 on seasonal variations of Naididae as a function of depth in Lake Michigan, and you had also cited that paper.  Then, you would need to cite the first paper like this:

The most common species of oligochaete in Lake Michigan is Stylodrilus heringianus (Lauritsen, et al. 1985a).

Thensecond paper would be cited as "(Lauritsen, et al. 1985b)."


Books, and Chapters from Books

The same general format is used for books:

Simonetta, A.M., and S. Conway-Morris. 1991. The Early Evolution of Metazoa and the Significance of Problematic Taxa
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, England.  586 p.

Notice that the book title is capitalized and underlined, and that the publisher, city of publication, and total page numbers in the book are given.  In your text, it would be cited "(Simonetta and Conway-Morris 1991)."

For chapters from books, use this format:

Chen, J.-Y., and B.-D. Erdtmann. 1991. Lower Cambrian fossil Lagerstaette from Chengjiang, Yunnan, China: Insights for reconstructing early metazoan life.  pp. 57-76 In: The Early Evolution of Metazoa and the Significance of Problematic Taxa. eds. A.M. Simonetta and S. Conway-Morris.  Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, England, 586 p.

Notice that the inclusive page numbers of the chapter and the word "In" in italics follow the chapter title and precede the book title, and that the book editors' names are preceded by "eds."


World Wide Web Sites

These formats are not standardized to my knowledge, but I would like to see as much of the follwoing information as possible:

Page author

This may be a person, whose name should be given at the bottom of the page with her or his contact information, or an institution, which may be identified in the text on the page or by its name in the URL. ("*.edu, *.org, *.com, where "*" represents the institution's name or an abbreviation of it).  You may also be able to work back from links on the page to the institution or person's home page, which will identify them.

Author's (if a person) or Web page's supporting institution, or both

(see above)

Title of the page

This should show at the top line of your browser window.

Date of last revision or modification of the page

If this is not given at the bottom (it's good Web etiquette to include it), then give the date on which you accessed and took information from the page, month, day, year, as in the example below.

The full URL, of course

Example:

Brueggeman, P. and N. Wu..  4/7/03.  Underwater Field Guide to Ross Island $ McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.   Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, (University of California at San Diego).  http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/nsf/fguide/porifera26.html

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Maintained by Sam Mozley, s_mozley@ncsu.edu

Last modified on January 7, 2004