How to format your references using the Liquid Crystals Today citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Liquid Crystals Today. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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]
Turney J. Strings and things. Nature. 2001;410(6831):873.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
Pyenson ND, Pyenson L. Treating medieval manuscripts as fossils. Science. 2005;309(5735):698–701; author reply 698-701.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
Deecke VB, Slater PJB, Ford JKB. Selective habituation shapes acoustic predator recognition in harbour seals. Nature. 2002;420(6912):171–173.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
Ahn J-H, Kim H-S, Lee KJ, et al. Heterogeneous three-dimensional electronics by use of printed semiconductor nanomaterials. Science. 2006;314(5806):1754–1757.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
Phelan J. Reading the American Novel 1920-2010. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2013.
An edited book
[1]
Breslin JG, Burg TN, Kim H-G, et al., editors. Recent Trends and Developments in Social Software: International Conferences on Social Software, BlogTalk 2008, Cork, Ireland, March 3-4, 2008, and BlogTalk 2009, Jeju Island, South Korea, September 15-16, 2009. Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
Kireyev D, Hung J. Valvular Pathology. In: Kireyev D, Hung J, editors. Cardiac Imaging in Clinical Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 51–72.

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 Liquid Crystals Today.

Blog post
[1]
Andrew E. Death Match: Tarantula vs. Wasp. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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. Federal Research: Assessment of the Financial Audit for SEMATECH’s Activities in 1988. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990. Report No.: RCED-90-35. .

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
Child RJ. The evolution of BARREN INFLORESCENCE1 and related AUX/IAA genes in angiosperms [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2013.

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]
Chira S. Women Who Voted for Donald Trump, in Their Own Words. New York Times. 2017 Jan 14;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 titleLiquid Crystals Today
AbbreviationLiq. Cryst. Today
ISSN (print)1358-314X
ISSN (online)1464-5181
ScopeInorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Condensed Matter Physics

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