How to format your references using the Materials and Structures citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Materials and Structures. 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

Thomas JM (2015) Catalysis: Tens of thousands of atoms replaced by one. Nature 525:325–326

A journal article with 2 authors

Schorlemmer D, Wiemer S (2005) Earth science: microseismicity data forecast rupture area. Nature 434:1086

A journal article with 3 authors

Mori T, Vale RD, Tomishige M (2007) How kinesin waits between steps. Nature 450:750–754

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hoegh-Guldberg O, Hughes L, McIntyre S, et al (2008) Ecology. Assisted colonization and rapid climate change. Science 321:345–346

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

King M (2011) Process Control. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Lolli G, Panza M, Venturi G (2015) From Logic to Practice: Italian Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Hesthaven JS, Rozza G, Stamm B (2016) Certified Error Control. In: Rozza G, Stamm B (eds) Certified Reduced Basis Methods for Parametrized Partial Differential Equations. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 45–66

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 Materials and Structures.

Blog post

Davis J (2016) Some Male Fiddler Crabs Trap Females In Order To Mate With Them. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/some-male-fiddler-crabs-trap-females-in-order-to-mate-with-them/. 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 (1989) Aviation Safety: Serious Problems Continue to Trouble the Air Traffic Control Work Force. 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

Dutta A (2010) Systems optimization for mobility management. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University

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

Wagner J (2017) Harvey and the Mets Struggle Again. New York Times B9

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	Materials and Structures
Abbreviation	Mater. Struct.
ISSN (print)	1359-5997
ISSN (online)	1871-6873
Scope	Civil and Structural Engineering Mechanics of Materials Building and Construction General Materials Science