How to format your references using the Materials citation style

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

Tammaro, P. Journal Club. A Physiologist Notes the Similarities between Animal and Plant Electricity. Nature 2009, 458, 11.

A journal article with 2 authors

Oliveira, J.G.; Barabási, A.-L. Human Dynamics: Darwin and Einstein Correspondence Patterns. Nature 2005, 437, 1251.

A journal article with 3 authors

Franke, K.J.; Schulze, G.; Pascual, J.I. Competition of Superconducting Phenomena and Kondo Screening at the Nanoscale. Science 2011, 332, 940–944.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Beall, C.M.; Laskowski, D.; Strohl, K.P.; Soria, R.; Villena, M.; Vargas, E.; Alarcon, A.M.; Gonzales, C.; Erzurum, S.C. Pulmonary Nitric Oxide in Mountain Dwellers. Nature 2001, 414, 411–412.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rogstad, D.H.; Mileant, A.; Pham, T.T. Antenna Arraying Techniques in the Deep Space Network; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2005; ISBN 9780471721314.

An edited book

Heterogeneous Wireless Access Networks: Architectures and Protocols; Hossain, E., Ed.; Springer US: Boston, MA, 2009; ISBN 9780387097763.

A chapter in an edited book

Défago, X.; Gradinariu, M.; Messika, S.; Raipin-Parvédy, P. Fault-Tolerant and Self-Stabilizing Mobile Robots Gathering. In Distributed Computing: 20th International Symposium, DISC 2006, Stockholm, Sweden, September 18-20, 2006. Proceedings; Dolev, S., Ed.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006; pp. 46–60 ISBN 9783540446248.

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.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Stranded Great White Shark In Cape Cod Rescued By Beachgoers Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/beached-shark-cape-cod-rescued-beachgoers/ (accessed on 30 October 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 Space Acquisitions: Uncertainties in the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program Pose Management and Oversight Challenges; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2008;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Myers, R.E. Moderating the Effectiveness of Messages to Promote Physical Activity in Type 2 Diabetes. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida: Tampa, FL, 2010.

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

Brantley, B. Deftly Conjuring the High Magic of Art. New York Times 2016, C1.

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
Abbreviation	Materials (Basel)
ISSN (online)	1996-1944
Scope	General Materials Science