How to format your references using the Bulletin of Materials Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Bulletin of Materials Science. 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

Smaglik, Paul. 2003. Science rocks. Nature 424: 233.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gruenheid, Samantha, and B. Brett Finlay. 2003. Microbial pathogenesis and cytoskeletal function. Nature 422: 775–781.

A journal article with 3 authors

Conaway, Ronald C., Christopher S. Brower, and Joan Weliky Conaway. 2002. Emerging roles of ubiquitin in transcription regulation. Science (New York, N.Y.) 296: 1254–1258.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Agrawal, Neema, Bindiya Sachdev, Janneth Rodrigues, K. Sowjanya Sree, and Raj K. Bhatnagar. 2013. Development associated profiling of chitinase and microRNA of Helicoverpa armigera identified chitinase repressive microRNA. Scientific reports 3: 2292.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chappell, David. 2008. Parris’s Standard Form of Building Contract. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd.

An edited book

Marín-García, José. 2008. Aging and the Heart: A Post-Genomic View. Edited by Michael J. Goldenthal and Gordon W. Moe. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, Xiaochang C., Chongmiao Zhang, Xiaoyan Ma, and Li Luo. 2015. Future Perspectives. In Water Cycle Management: A New Paradigm of Wastewater Reuse and Safety Control, ed. Chongmiao Zhang, Xiaoyan Ma, and Li Luo, 95–98. SpringerBriefs in Water Science and Technology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Bulletin of Materials Science.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2014. 7 Deep Sea Dwellers Who Hardly Look Like Animals At All. IFLScience. IFLScience. October 17.

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. 1996. School Facilities: Profiles of School Condition by State. HEHS-96-148. 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

Lefebvre, Karlea. 2017. Racial Prejudice, Individualism, and Political Identity: Understanding the Forty-Year Trend of Anti-Welfare Spending Preferences. Doctoral dissertation, Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University.

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

Talmadge, Caitlin. 2017. A Military Budget Without a Plan. New York Times, March 6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Gruenheid and Finlay 2003; Smaglik 2003).

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

Two authors: (Gruenheid and Finlay 2003)
Three or more authors: (Agrawal et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Bulletin of Materials Science
ISSN (print)	0250-4707
ISSN (online)	0973-7669
Scope