How to format your references using the Experimental Techniques citation style

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

Levinson P (2000) The enduring test. Nature 404:937

A journal article with 2 authors

Heyward AJ, Negri AP (2012) Turbulence, cleavage, and the naked embryo: a case for coral clones. Science 335:1064

A journal article with 3 authors

Mitchell MW, Lundeen JS, Steinberg AM (2004) Super-resolving phase measurements with a multiphoton entangled state. Nature 429:161–164

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hsu SY, Nakabayashi K, Nishi S, et al (2002) Activation of orphan receptors by the hormone relaxin. Science 295:671–674

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Monks RAG, Reed Lajoux A, LeBaron D (2010) Corporate Valuation for Portfolio Investment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Yoshimura T, Nishikawa T, Homma H (2016) D-Amino Acids: Physiology, Metabolism, and Application. Springer Japan, Tokyo

A chapter in an edited book

Busnel P, Giroux S (2010) Security, Privacy, and Dependability in Smart Homes: A Pattern Catalog Approach. In: Lee Y, Bien ZZ, Mokhtari M, et al (eds) Aging Friendly Technology for Health and Independence: 8th International Conference on Smart Homes and Health Telematics, ICOST 2010, Seoul, Korea, June 22-24, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 24–31

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 Experimental Techniques.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) Stardust Trapped Deep Within The Ocean Reveals A 2.6-Million-Year-Old Mystery. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/stardust-trapped-deep-within-the-ocean-reveals-a-26millionyearold-mystery/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1983) Improvements in Certain District of Columbia Public Schools’ Administrative Operations. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kantar L (2010) Clinical judgment among new nursing graduates: A multiple-case study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Stewart JB (2016) Fossil Fuel Stocks Divide a Village. New York Times B1

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	Experimental Techniques
Abbreviation	Exp. Tech.
ISSN (print)	0732-8818
ISSN (online)	1747-1567
Scope	Mechanical Engineering Mechanics of Materials