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

May R (2007) Tony Blair’s era: good news, bad news. Nature 447:1053

A journal article with 2 authors

Flatt T, Promislow DEL (2007) Physiology. Still pondering an age-old question. Science 318:1255–1256

A journal article with 3 authors

Arash B, Wang Q, Varadan VK (2014) Mechanical properties of carbon nanotube/polymer composites. Sci Rep 4:6479

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Okabe M, Imai T, Kurusu M, et al (2001) Translational repression determines a neuronal potential in Drosophila asymmetric cell division. Nature 411:94–98

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McLean D (2012) Understanding Aerodynamics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

D’Onofrio M, Burigana C (2009) Questions of Modern Cosmology: Galileo’s Legacy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Fortunati L, Manganelli AM, Law P-L, Yang S (2012) Beijing Calling… Mobile Communication in Contemporary China. In: Law P-L (ed) New Connectivities in China: Virtual, Actual and Local Interactions. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 39–51

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 E (2015) Recently Identified “DNA Clock” Helps Predict Mortality. In: IFLScience. 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 (2005) Progress of the DD(X) Destroyer Program. 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

Sutton DL (2015) Alumni perceptions of the role of field education in professional preparation. 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

Talmadge C (2017) A Military Budget Without a Plan. 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

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