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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

[1]

W.J. Sutherland, Review by quality not quantity for better policy, Nature. 503 (2013) 167.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

D.M. Abrams, S.H. Strogatz, Linguistics: modelling the dynamics of language death, Nature. 424 (2003) 900.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

D.J. Dickinson, W.J. Nelson, W.I. Weis, A polarized epithelium organized by beta- and alpha-catenin predates cadherin and metazoan origins, Science. 331 (2011) 1336–1339.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

X. Xu, M.A. Norell, X. Kuang, X. Wang, Q. Zhao, C. Jia, Basal tyrannosauroids from China and evidence for protofeathers in tyrannosauroids, Nature. 431 (2004) 680–684.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.W. Leis, Digital Signal Processing Using MATLAB for Students and Researchers, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2011.

An edited book

[1]

R. Nowak, A. Whelan, eds., Networked Music Cultures: Contemporary Approaches, Emerging Issues, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

F. Shanahan, Linking lifestyle with microbiota and risk of chronic inflammatory disorders, in: G.A.W. Rook (Ed.), The Hygiene Hypothesis and Darwinian Medicine, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2009: pp. 93–102.

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]

J. Fang, The Genomes of Darwin’s Finches Have Now All Been Sequenced, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/genomes-darwins-finches-have-now-all-been-sequenced/ (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, Treasury Electronic Signature Concept, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

M. Galan, Educational practices to support homeless students, Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 2012.

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]

L. Greenhouse, Every Justice Creates a New Court, New York Times. (2009) A27.

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 title	Acta Materialia
Abbreviation	Acta Mater.
ISSN (print)	1359-6454
Scope	Ceramics and Composites Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Metals and Alloys Polymers and Plastics

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