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]

C. Cepko, Neuroscience. Seeing the light of day, Science. 329 (2010) 403–404.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

F. Murray, S. Stern, ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Linking and leveraging, Science. 348 (2015) 1203.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

I.A.G. Snellen, E.J.W. de Mooij, S. Albrecht, The changing phases of extrasolar planet CoRoT-1b, Nature. 459 (2009) 543–545.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

J.T. Rodgers, C. Lerin, W. Haas, S.P. Gygi, B.M. Spiegelman, P. Puigserver, Nutrient control of glucose homeostasis through a complex of PGC-1alpha and SIRT1, Nature. 434 (2005) 113–118.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J. Kay, A. Tasman, Essentials of Psychiatry, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2006.

An edited book

[1]

A.E. Hassanien, M.F. Tolba, A. Taher Azar, eds., Advanced Machine Learning Technologies and Applications: Second International Conference, AMLTA 2014, Cairo, Egypt, November 28-30, 2014. Proceedings, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

G.A. Rummler, A.J. Ramias, A Framework for Defining and Designing the Structure of Work, in: J.V. Brocke, M. Rosemann (Eds.), Handbook on Business Process Management 1: Introduction, Methods, and Information Systems, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010: pp. 83–106.

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]

D. Andrew, Surprising Ways That Caffeine Affects Your Body And Brain, IFLScience. (2016).

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, Energy Management: Technology Development Program Taking Action to Address Problems, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

M. Baghdadi, A comparison of gender representation in English (EFL) and Arabic (AFL) textbooks in Iran: A critical discourse analysis, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2012.

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]

M. Furber, R. Pérez-Peña, Family Asks: Why Did Police Kill Woman Who Called 911?, New York Times. (2017) A15.

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