How to format your references using the Materials Discovery citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Materials Discovery. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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]
E. Bender, Developing world: Global warning, Nature. 509 (2014) S64-5.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
D.V. Fyodorov, J.T. Kadonaga, Dynamics of ATP-dependent chromatin assembly by ACF, Nature. 418 (2002) 897–900.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
T. Abel, G.L. Bryan, M.L. Norman, The formation of the first star in the Universe, Science. 295 (2002) 93–98.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
A. Grimson, M. Srivastava, B. Fahey, B.J. Woodcroft, H.R. Chiang, N. King, B.M. Degnan, D.S. Rokhsar, D.P. Bartel, Early origins and evolution of microRNAs and Piwi-interacting RNAs in animals, Nature. 455 (2008) 1193–1197.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
P. Minns, I. Elliott, FSM-Based Digital Design Using Verilog HDL, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2008.
An edited book
[1]
S. Moriai, ed., Fast Software Encryption: 20th International Workshop, FSE 2013, Singapore, March 11-13, 2013. Revised Selected Papers, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
M. Claverol, D. Garijo, M. Korman, C. Seara, R.I. Silveira, Stabbing Segments with Rectilinear Objects, in: A. Kosowski, I. Walukiewicz (Eds.), Fundamentals of Computation Theory: 20th International Symposium, FCT 2015, Gdańsk, Poland, August 17-19, 2015, Proceedings, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015: pp. 53–64.

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 Discovery.

Blog post
[1]
J. Davis, New “Hog-Nosed” Rat Discovered In Indonesia, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-hog-nosed-rat-discovered-indonesia/ (accessed October 30, 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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, Radio Communications: Congressional Action Needed to Ensure Agencies Collaborate to Develop a Joint Solution, 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
[1]
S. Chatterji, A novel agent-based dynamic load balancing model for cloud networks, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2016.

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]
L. Greenhouse, Just Answer the Question, New York Times. (2010) A23.

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 titleMaterials Discovery
ISSN (print)2352-9245
Scope

Other styles