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

Hess H (2006) Materials science. Toward devices powered by biomolecular motors. Science 312:860–861

A journal article with 2 authors

Kormendy J, Bender R (2011) Supermassive black holes do not correlate with dark matter haloes of galaxies. Nature 469:377–380

A journal article with 3 authors

Cacchione DA, Pratson LF, Ogston AS (2002) The shaping of continental slopes by internal tides. Science 296:724–727

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Inagaki S, Guan S, Ohsuna T, Terasaki O (2002) An ordered mesoporous organosilica hybrid material with a crystal-like wall structure. Nature 416:304–307

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Eynon J (2013) The Design Manager’s Handbook. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Reis R, Cao Y, Wirth G (2015) Circuit Design for Reliability. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Harrison J (2007) Automating Elementary Number-Theoretic Proofs Using Gröbner Bases. In: Pfenning F (ed) Automated Deduction – CADE-21: 21st International Conference on Automated Deduction Bremen, Germany, July 17-20, 2007 Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 51–66

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

Evans K (2017) An Active Sex Life Helps You Perform Better At Work, Too. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/an-active-sex-life-helps-you-perform-better-at-work-too/. 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 (1982) The Federal Communications Commission’s International Telecommunications Activities. 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

Dalbey SB (2017) Celebrity Endorsements and Voting Intentions: The Role of Liking and Preference for Consistency. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Phillips-Sandy M (2016) Autocorrect and the Tao of Texting. New York Times A23

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