How to format your references using the Acta Crystallographica Section C: Crystal Structure Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Crystallographica Section C: Crystal Structure Communications. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles 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
Di Santo, J. P. (2010). Science 329, 44–45.
A journal article with 2 authors
Kleinman, C. L. & Majewski, J. (2012). Science 335, 1302; author reply 1302.
A journal article with 3 authors
Shaw, S. L., Kamyar, R. & Ehrhardt, D. W. (2003). Science 300, 1715–1718.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Li, L., Liang, J., Chou, S.-Y., Zhu, X., Niu, X., ZhibinYu & Pei, Q. (2014). Sci. Rep. 4, 4307.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Pasternak, H., Hoch, H.-U. & Füg, D. (2010). Stahltragwerke im Industriebau Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Chen, K. & Ravindran, A. (2016). Forging Connections between Computational Mathematics and Computational Geometry: Papers from the 3rd International Conference on Computational Mathematics and Computational Geometry Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Beierle, C. (2016). Vol. Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems: 9th International Symposium, FoIKS 2016, Linz, Austria, March 7-11, 2016. Proceedings, edited by M. Gyssens & G. Simari. pp. 83–94. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Acta Crystallographica Section C: Crystal Structure Communications.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015). IFLScience.

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 (1997). Surface Transportation: Prospects for Innovation Through Research, Intelligent Transportation Systems, State Infrastructure Banks, and Design-Build Contracting 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
Green, R. E. (2010). From Hart to Hammerstein: The music of Richard Rodgers and his evolution toward the integrated musical. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach.

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
Poniewozik, J. (2017). New York Times C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Di Santo, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Di Santo, 2010; Kleinman & Majewski, 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Kleinman & Majewski, 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleActa Crystallographica Section C: Crystal Structure Communications
ISSN (print)0108-2701
ISSN (online)1600-5759
Scope

Other styles