How to format your references using the International Journal of Plastics Technology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Plastics Technology. 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

Hill WG (2005) Genetics. A century of corn selection. Science 307:683–684

A journal article with 2 authors

Diaz RJ, Rosenberg R (2008) Spreading dead zones and consequences for marine ecosystems. Science 321:926–929

A journal article with 3 authors

Grosenick L, Clement TS, Fernald RD (2007) Fish can infer social rank by observation alone. Nature 445:429–432

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hutson MS, Tokutake Y, Chang M-S, et al (2003) Forces for morphogenesis investigated with laser microsurgery and quantitative modeling. Science 300:145–149

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kuehni RG (2004) Color. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Grijs RD, González Delgado RM (2005) Starbursts: From 30 Doradus to Lyman Break Galaxies. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Wang Q (2013) Thirty Years Before/After. In: Strong-Wilson T, Mitchell C, Susann A, Pithouse-Morgan K (eds) Productive Remembering and Social Agency. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, pp 49–60

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 International Journal of Plastics Technology.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) GM Mosquitoes Set To Be Released In Brazil To Combat Dengue. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/gm-mosquitoes-set-be-released-brazil-combat-dengue-0/. 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 (2009) Information Technology: Challenges Remain for VA’s Sharing of Electronic Health Records with DOD. 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

Acosta J (2013) Building bridges: A specialized training program for professionals in school settings to address bullying in LGBTQ youth: A grant proposal. 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

Gorman J (2016) With Lasers in the Flight Plan, Goggles Are Vital. New York Times D2

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	International Journal of Plastics Technology
Abbreviation	Int. J. Plast. Technol.
ISSN (print)	0972-656X
ISSN (online)	0975-072X
Scope	Polymers and Plastics

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