How to format your references using the Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online. 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
Vivien, L. (2015). Nature 528, 483–484.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hoppler, S. & Wheeler, G. N. (2015). Science 348, 1316–1317.
A journal article with 3 authors
Whitney, D., Westwood, D. A. & Goodale, M. A. (2003). Nature 423, 869–873.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Hanada, K., Kumagai, K., Yasuda, S., Miura, Y., Kawano, M., Fukasawa, M. & Nishijima, M. (2003). Nature 426, 803–809.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Rao, K. R., Bojkovic, Z. S. & Milovanovic, D. A. (2005). Introduction to Multimedia Communications Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Schulz, S. (2005). The Chemistry of Pheromones and Other Semiochemicals II: -/- Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Serra, H. A. de A. & Paulino, N. (2015). Vol. Design of Switched-Capacitor Filter Circuits Using Low Gain Amplifiers, edited by N. Paulino. pp. 23–28. 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 E: Structure Reports Online.

Blog post
Hale, T. (2016). IFLScience, https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/five-awesome-science-courses-you-can-take-online-free/.

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 (1994). Weather Forecasting: Improvements Needed in Laboratory Software Development Processes 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
Sheppard, K. C. (2017). An Examination of School Choice Access, Opportunities, and Academic Outcomes in an Intra-District School Choice Program. 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
Rothenberg, B. (2017). New York Times B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Vivien, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Vivien, 2015; Hoppler & Wheeler, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Hoppler & Wheeler, 2015)
  • Three or more authors: (Hanada et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleActa Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online
AbbreviationActa Crystallogr. Sect. E Struct. Rep. Online
ISSN (online)1600-5368
Scope

Other styles