How to format your references using the Materials Letters: X citation style

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

U. Neu, Is recent major hurricane activity normal?, Nature 451 (2008) E5; discussion E6.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

A.D. Gitlin, M.C. Nussenzweig, Immunology: Fifty years of B lymphocytes, Nature 517 (2015) 139–141.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

T. Schmith, S. Johansen, P. Thejll, Comment on “A semi-empirical approach to projecting future sea-level rise,” Science 317 (2007) 1866; author reply 1866.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

B.J. Soden, D.L. Jackson, V. Ramaswamy, M.D. Schwarzkopf, X. Huang, The radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening, Science 310 (2005) 841–844.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

C.R. Engle, K.K. Quagrainie, M.M. Dey, Seafood and Aquaculture Marketing Handbook, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2016.

An edited book

[1]

R. van Leuken, G. Sicard, eds., Integrated Circuit and System Design. Power and Timing Modeling, Optimization, and Simulation: 20th International Workshop, PATMOS 2010, Grenoble, France, September 7-10, 2010, Revised Selected Papers, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

G. De Lucia, Galaxy Evolution in the Era of Digital Surveys: A Theoretical Overview, in: N.R. Napolitano, G. Longo, M. Marconi, M. Paolillo, E. Iodice (Eds.), The Universe of Digital Sky Surveys: A Meeting to Honour the 70th Birthday of Massimo Capaccioli, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016: pp. 33–40.

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 Letters: X.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, NASA Wants To Start Refueling Satellites In Earth Orbit By 2020, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-wants-to-start-refueling-satellites-in-earth-orbit-by-2020/ (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, HHS Ability To Effectively Implement Incentive Funding for State Information Systems in the Aid to Families With Dependent Children Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J.B. Cooper, Examining the relationship between grade configuration and teachers’ perceptions of working conditions in public K–8 schools and middle schools in North Carolina, Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2008.

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]

B. Rothenberg, Ninth-Seeded Radwanska Exceeds Her Expectations, New York Times (2017) D3.

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 Letters: X
ISSN (print)	2590-1508
Scope