How to format your references using the Acta Materialia citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Materialia. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
[1]
K. Sanderson, Lignocellulose: A chewy problem, Nature. 474 (2011) S12-4.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
M. Carrete, J.L. Tella, High individual consistency in fear of humans throughout the adult lifespan of rural and urban burrowing owls, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 3524.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
Y. Song, J. Wang, S.-T. Yau, Controlled glucose consumption in yeast using a transistor-like device, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 5429.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
T. Basu, K.K. Iyer, K. Singh, E.V. Sampathkumaran, Novel dielectric anomalies due to spin-chains above and below Néel temperature in Ca3Co2O6, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 3104.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
J. McConnell, Index of Medical Imaging, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 2011.
An edited book
[1]
S.N. Sivanandam, Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
M. da Silva Hounsell, L.K. Bittencourt, A.G. Silva, 3D Reconstruction from Planar Contours: Analysis of Heuristic Tiling Approaches, in: M.L. Gavrilova, C.J.K. Tan (Eds.), Transactions on Computational Science XXII, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014: pp. 95–114.

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 Materialia.

Blog post
[1]
S. Luntz, You Really Can Be Drunk On Love, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/brain/you-really-can-be-drunk-love/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, Space Acquisitions: DOD Faces Substantial Challenges in Developing New Space Systems, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2009.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
J.M. Fernandes, Physical and chemical properties of Jupiter’s north and south polar vortex revealed through mid-infrared imaging, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2017.

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
[1]
J. Gorman, Your Dog Remembers More Than You Think, New York Times. (2016) D6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleActa Materialia
AbbreviationActa Mater.
ISSN (print)1359-6454
ScopeCeramics and Composites
Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
Metals and Alloys
Polymers and Plastics

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