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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Sadler, J. E. (2003). Science 301, 177–179.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhang, M. & Barash, S. (2000). Nature 408, 971–975.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sokolov, S., Scheuer, T. & Catterall, W. A. (2007). Nature 446, 76–78.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Tuzzolino, A. J., Economou, T. E., Clark, B. C., Tsou, P., Brownlee, D. E., Green, S. F., McDonnell, J. A. M., McBride, N. & Colwell, M. T. S. H. (2004). Science 304, 1776–1780.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smed, J. & Hakonen, H. (2017). Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Rao, P. S. & Kumar, C. G. (2013). Characterization of Improved Sweet Sorghum Cultivars New Delhi: Springer India.

A chapter in an edited book

Moreira, L., Balaguer, F. & Goel, A. (2015). Vol. Intestinal Tumorigenesis: Mechanisms of Development & Progression, edited by V. W. Yang & A. B. Bialkowska. pp. 137–168. 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

Evans, K. (2017). 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 (1990). Airline Competition: Impact of FAA Legislation on Passenger Facilities Charges and Trust Fund Spending 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

Roth, M. M. (2017). Depositional Environment of the Carbonate Cap Rock at the Pine Prairie Field, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana: Implications of Salt Diapirism on Cook Mountain Reservoir Genesis. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana.

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

Murphy, M. J. O. (2015). New York Times C30.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sadler, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Sadler, 2003; Zhang & Barash, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Zhang & Barash, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Tuzzolino et al., 2004)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides