Create a spot-on reference in GSA
What is GSA Style?
The acronym GSA stands for the Geological Society of America, a research society focusing on the field of geology and the adjacent sciences. The GSA referencing style, often simply referred to as GSA Style, is the style of bibliographic references and in-text citations adopted by the Geological Society of America for its journals.
The authors submitting their manuscripts to the journals published by the Geological Society of America (Geology, GSA Bulletin, Geosphere, GSA Today, Environmental & Engineering Geoscience) are required to conform to the requirements of GSA Style.
Particularities of GSA references and citations
GSA Style adopts the traditional author-date approach to bibliographic references. This means that the sources are identified by the name of the author and year of publication when referred to in the text of one’s paper. At the same time, the bibliographic references are ordered alphabetically by the last names of the authors.
A bibliographic reference compiled in accordance with the requirements of the Geological Society of America should generally include the following elements: names of the authors, year of publication, title, and publication details (i.e. city of publication and publisher for books; journal title, volume, issue, and page range for journal articles, and so on). The style also has specific requirements to online sources and distinguishes between DOIs and ordinary URLs.
A characteristic trait of GSA Style is the fact that the Geological Society of America provides only key guidelines for the authors, which means that you will have to figure out yourself how to proceed with citing sources such as online videos, social media posts, and so on.
Examples of GSA references
Here are some examples of bibliographic references compiled in compliance with the requirements of the Geological Society of America’s journals:
Book:
von Raumer, J.F., and Neubauer, F., eds., 1993, Pre-Mesozoic Geology in the Alps: Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 677 p.
Journal article:
Liu, S., Hernández-Molina, F.J., Rodrigues, S., and Van Rooij, D., 2023, Deep-water circulation in the northeast Atlantic during the mid- and Late Cretaceous: Geology, v. 51, no. 6, p. 515–520, https://doi.org/10.1130/g50886.1.
Thesis:
Shen, L., 2020, Paper-based microfluidics for electrochemical applications [Ph.D. dissertation]: Darmstadt, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 131 p.
Website:
Strickland, A., 2023, Perseverance rover captures new images of ancient river evidence: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/18/world/mars-river-perseverance-rover-scn/index.html (accessed June 2023).
Online GSA reference generator by Grafiati: create your GSA Style citations free of charge
The Geological Society of America reference generator by Grafiati is designed as a top-level citation generator to create automated references in GSA Style. By using our GSA citation generator, you get high-quality bibliographic references in GSA format, the correct ordering of references in your bibliography, as well as in-text citations. Furthermore, you get a number of tools that make your work with bibliographic references easy and handy.
To create your bibliography in GSA Style, use the widget at the top of this page by selecting the type of source you would like to cite.
Using the GSA generator by Grafiati, you can create your list of references cited quickly and free of charge and manage it online.