How to format your references using the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. 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

[1]

Brumfiel G 2003 High-voltage shock sparks fusion from X-ray crush Nature 422 549

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Rohwer F and Thurber R V 2009 Viruses manipulate the marine environment Nature 459 207–12

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Brose U, Williams R J and Martinez N D 2003 Comment on “Foraging adaptation and the relationship between food-web complexity and stability” Science 301 918; author reply 918

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Wang W, Du Y, Xu G, Zhang X, Liu E, Liu Z, Shi Y, Chen J, Wu G and Zhang X-X 2013 Large linear magnetoresistance and Shubnikov-de Hass oscillations in single crystals of YPdBi Heusler topological insulators Sci. Rep. 3 2181

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Thie P R and Keough G E 2008 An Introduction to Linear Programming and Game Theory (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Schwarz J 2016 Atypical Elements in Drug Design vol 17 (Cham: Springer International Publishing)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Korenok O 2011 Bayesian Methods in Non-linear Time Series Complex Systems in Finance and Econometrics ed R A Meyers (New York, NY: Springer) pp 54–68

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 IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering.

Blog post

[1]

Carpineti A 2016 A Rare Transit Of Mercury Will Take Place This Monday - Here’s How To Watch It Live IFLScience

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office 1997 EPA: Control of Emissions of Air Pollution From Highway Heavy-Duty Engines (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Moncur H B 2014 Exploring primary caregivers’ perceptions of the effects of secondhand marijuana smoke on children: A quantitative study Doctoral dissertation (Long Beach, CA: 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

[1]

Hubbard B and MacFARQUHAR N 2016 New Cease-Fire Begins in Syria, but Violations Are Reported Within Hours New York Times A13

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	IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering
Abbreviation	IOP Conf. Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng.
ISSN (print)	1757-8981
ISSN (online)	1757-899X
Scope