How to cite Geoscience Australia sources of information

Last updated:7 June 2023

Introduction

Information from Geoscience Australia must be acknowledged responsibly whenever it is used. Citing (noting the source of information in the body of another work) and referencing (listing all sources of information in a reference list or bibliography at the end of a work) are important for:

  • acknowledging the ideas, words or data of others
  • enabling others to find and use the original sources

Geoscience Australia expects to be cited when ideas or information taken from Geoscience Australia have been quoted, paraphrased or summarised.

Copyright applies where you are not just using Geoscience Australia’s information, ideas or data but are copying from Geoscience Australia material. Where you are copying more than a non-substantial quote from Geoscience Australia material licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, you will also need to comply with the requirements of that licence. We provide information about attributing Geoscience Australia copyright on our Attributing copyright Material licensed from Geoscience Australia page.

Citing

Citing a work within the text needs to be consistent with the reference list. For most works, this means naming the author(s) or editor(s) and year of publication, egs. '(ed. Blewett, 2012)' or '(Henderson & Strusz, 1982)'. Note that authors can be people or corporate bodies (such as 'Geoscience Australia').

Names of corporate authors may be shortened to an abbreviation if sufficiently well-known, eg. '(BMR, 1990)'.

To distinguish multiple works by the same author(s) from the same year in citations and the reference list, a letter suffix is added to the year, eg. '(Khan, 2022a)' and '(Khan, 2022b)', or just '(Khan, 2022a and 2022b)' if cited at the same place in the text.

Referencing

The following examples illustrate how to reference the most common Geoscience Australia publications and other sources using an author-date system. More detailed information can be found in the Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, 6th edition, published by Wiley (2002). Note however that there are many different styles (and variations of styles) in use by academic institutions, commercial publishers and other bodies. The examples below do not supersede the specific requirements that may need to be followed when submitting a work for assessment or publication elsewhere; rather, they act as a guide to the elements that should be included when citing or referencing Geoscience Australia works.

While most types of works have common elements, such as author(s), title and year of publication, some may also have unique elements to be included in their references, to clarify what form they take, eg. 'online video'. References to online sources are generally similar to print equivalents, but should always include a full Digital Object Identifier (DOI), persistent identifier (PID) or Uniform Resource Locator (URL), to help readers find the original online sources as easily as possible. URLs should be accompanied by a date viewed (since the content of non-persistent online sources can change over time).

Books, reports and pamphlets

Blewett, R.S. (ed.) 2012. Shaping a nation: a geology of Australia. Geoscience Australia and ANU E Press, Canberra. http://doi.org/10.22459/SN.08.2012

Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics. 1990. Geoscience for Australia's future. BMR, Canberra.

Champion, D.C. 2013. Neodymium depleted mantle model age map of Australia: explanatory notes and user guide. Record 2013/044. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2013.044

Goodwin, J.A. & Lane, R.J.L. 2021. The North Australian Craton 3D Gravity and Magnetic Inversion Models - A trial for first pass modelling of the entire Australian continent. Record 2021/033. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2021.033

Henderson, G.A.M. & Strusz, D.L. 1982. Rocks and fossils around Canberra. 2nd ed. AGPS: Canberra.

Hoatson, D.M., Jaireth, S. & Miezitis, Y. 2011. The major rare-earth-element deposits of Australia: geological setting, exploration, and resources. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/71820

Senior, A., Britt, A.F., Summerfield, D., Hughes, A., Hitchman, A., Cross, A., Champion, D., Huston, D., Bastrakov, E.N., Sexton, M., Moloney, J., Pheeney, J., Teh, M. & Schofield, A. 2021. Australia's Identified Mineral Resources 2020. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/1327-1466.2020

Tingey, R.J. (ed.) 1983. International lexicon of Antarctic stratigraphic nomenclature. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, Canberra, and University of Tasmania Dept. of Geology, Hobart.

Chapter or section of a book or report (including published conference abstracts or papers)

Champion, D.C. & Smithies, R.H. 2003. Archaean granites. In: Blevin, P.L., Jones, M. & Chappell, B.W. (eds.), Magmas to mineralisation: the Ishihara symposium. Record 2003/14. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, 13-17, http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/48939

Pain, C.F., Pillans, B.J., Roach, I.C., Worrall, L. & Wilford, J.R. 2013. Old, flat and red- Australia's distinctive landscape. In: Blewett, R.S. (ed.), Shaping a nation: a geology of Australia. Geoscience Australia and ANU E Press, Canberra, 226-275, viewed 3 August 2013, http://doi.org/10.22459/SN.08.2012.05

Wyborn, L. & Woodcock, R. 2010. Thinking out cloud; the need for increasing virtualisation of Australian geoscience data to underpin cost-effective deep exploration. In: Australian Earth Sciences Convention 2010. Abstracts 98. Geological Society of Australia, Sydney, 398-399.

Journal articles

Hudson, D. & Mueller, N. 2009. Fighting fire with satellite datasets. AusGeo News, 94, viewed 3 August 2012, http://www.ga.gov.au/ausgeonews/ausgeonews200906/fire.jsp

Middelmann-Fernandes, M.H. 2010. Flood damage estimation beyond stage-damage functions: an Australian example. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 3, 88-96, http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-318X.2009.01058.x

Pigram, C.J. & Davies, H.L., 1987. Terranes and accretion history of the New Guinea orogen. BMR Journal of Australian Geology & Geophysics, 10, 193-211, http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/81217

Maps

(include scale if not included in title or series statement)

Abell, R.S. 1992. Canberra. Australia 1:100,000 geological series, sheet 8727. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Canberra.

Minty, B.R.S., Franklin, R., Milligan, P.R., Richardson, L.M. & Wilford, J. 2010. Radiometric map of Australia. Scale 1:15,000,000. 2nd edn. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/70791

Theses

(note titles of theses are not italicized as they are unpublished works)

Fisher, N.H. 1941. The relation between gold, fineness and conditions of deposition: with special reference to the Morobe goldfield, New Guinea. D.Sc. thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.

Datasets

Geoscience Australia. 2006. Geodata topo 250k Series 3 (Google Earth format). Geoscience Australia, Canberra, http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/65137

Geoscience Australia Geochronology Laboratory. 2007. Geoscience Australia SHRIMP U-Pb geochronology interim data release July 2007. OZCHRON Geochronology Database. Geoscience Australia, Canberra, http://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/65358

Websites

Geoscience Australia. 2013. Topographic Information. http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/topographic-maps-data, viewed 22 October 2021.

Geoscience Australia. 2022. Strategy 2028: Earth sciences for Australia’s future. https://www.ga.gov.au/strategy-2028, viewed 7 March 2022.

Online videos

Geoscience Australia. 2013. Data cube - the future of Earth Observation data management and analysis [video], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYB5Sw80Vfs, viewed 14 June 2022.

Geoscience Australia. 2021. Introduction to the Geological TimeWalk [video], https://www.ga.gov.au/education/classroom-resources/geological-time, viewed 8 October 2021.

Social media posts

(If app has usernames, include this after the author’s name, in square brackets; use first sentence or first 20 words as title and follow this with the name of the app or its posts, in square brackets], then day and month of the post, and URL; retain original spelling, hashtags and emojis if possible.)

Geoscience Australia [@GeoscienceAus]. 2022. Join us for our National #ScienceWeek public talk. [Tweet], 15 August, https://twitter.com/GeoscienceAus/status/1559077440550486017, viewed 25 August 2022.

Geoscience Australia. 2022. Happy 50th Birthday #Landsat! [Facebook post], 27 July, https://www.facebook.com/GeoscienceAustralia, viewed 3 August 2022.