How to format your references using the Materials Discovery Today citation style

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

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]

O.D. Velev, Materials science. Self-assembly of unusual nanoparticle crystals, Science 312 (2006) 376–377.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

E. Fehr, S. Gächter, Altruistic punishment in humans, Nature 415 (2002) 137–140.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

G. Coaker, A. Falick, B. Staskawicz, Activation of a phytopathogenic bacterial effector protein by a eukaryotic cyclophilin, Science 308 (2005) 548–550.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

J.R. Lydeard, S. Jain, M. Yamaguchi, J.E. Haber, Break-induced replication and telomerase-independent telomere maintenance require Pol32, Nature 448 (2007) 820–823.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

C.A. Bishop, Roll-to-Roll Vacuum Deposition of Barrier Coatings, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2015.

An edited book

[1]

U. Resch-Genger, ed., Standardization and Quality Assurance in Fluorescence Measurements I: Techniques, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M. de Gemmis, P. Lops, C. Musto, F. Narducci, G. Semeraro, Semantics-Aware Content-Based Recommender Systems, in: F. Ricci, L. Rokach, B. Shapira (Eds.), Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2015: pp. 119–159.

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 Today.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Why Does Hodor In Game Of Thrones Only Say One Word? Neuroscience Explains, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-does-hodor-game-thrones-only-say-one-word-neuroscience-explains/ (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, NASA Personnel: Shortages of Scientists and Engineers Due to Retirements Unlikely in the 1990s, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1991.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C. Weber, Exercise for older adults with dementia, Doctoral dissertation, 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]

L. Saslow, For Roosevelt Schools, New Year and New Woes, New York Times (2006) 14LI2.

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 Discovery Today
ISSN (print)	2352-9245
Scope