How to format your references using the Colloids and Interfaces citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Colloids and Interfaces. 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

Aho, A.V. Software and the Future of Programming Languages. Science 2004, 303, 1331–1333.

A journal article with 2 authors

Oki, T.; Kanae, S. Global Hydrological Cycles and World Water Resources. Science 2006, 313, 1068–1072.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shen, P.-C.; Lin, M.-S.; Lin, C.-F. Environmentally Benign Technology for Efficient Warm-White Light Emission. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 5307.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Thornton, J.A.; Kercher, J.P.; Riedel, T.P.; Wagner, N.L.; Cozic, J.; Holloway, J.S.; Dubé, W.P.; Wolfe, G.M.; Quinn, P.K.; Middlebrook, A.M.; et al. A Large Atomic Chlorine Source Inferred from Mid-Continental Reactive Nitrogen Chemistry. Nature 2010, 464, 271–274.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sandou, G. Metaheuristic Optimization for the Design of Automatic Control Laws; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ USA, 2013; ISBN 9781118796351.

An edited book

Economics and Computation: An Introduction to Algorithmic Game Theory, Computational Social Choice, and Fair Division; Rothe, J., Ed.; Springer Texts in Business and Economics; 1st ed. 2016.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2016; ISBN 9783662479032.

A chapter in an edited book

Edge, D.; Blackwell, A.F. Peripheral Tangible Interaction. In Peripheral Interaction: Challenges and Opportunities for HCI in the Periphery of Attention; Bakker, S., Hausen, D., Selker, T., Eds.; Human–Computer Interaction Series; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; pp. 65–93 ISBN 9783319295213.

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 Colloids and Interfaces.

Blog post

Andrews, R. Scientists Finally Unravel Hawaii’s Bizarre Origin Story Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-finally-unravel-hawaiis-bizarre-origin-story/ (accessed on 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office Social Security Numbers: Federal Actions Could Further Decrease Availability in Public Records, Though Other Vulnerabilities Remain; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2007;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sheldon, A. The Impact of Power Restoration and Narcissism on Aggression. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2010.

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

Thrush, G.; Shear, M.D.; Sullivan, E. Former General Taking Control At White House. New York Times 2017, A1.

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	Colloids and Interfaces
ISSN (online)	9999-9999
Scope