How to format your references using the Materials Research Bulletin citation style

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

[1]

R.D. Launius, Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), Nature. 489 (2012) 368.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Sahakian, S. Morein-Zamir, Professor’s little helper, Nature. 450 (2007) 1157–1159.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

N. Blöchliger, A. Vitalis, A. Caflisch, High-resolution visualisation of the states and pathways sampled in molecular dynamics simulations, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6264.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Cho, T. Hashimoto, E. Wong, Y. Hori, L.B. Wood, L. Zhao, K.M. Haigis, B.T. Hyman, D. Irimia, Microfluidic chemotaxis platform for differentiating the roles of soluble and bound amyloid-β on microglial accumulation, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 1823.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.B. Kadane, D.A. Schum, A Probabilistic Analysis of the Sacco and Vanzetti Evidence: Kadane/A Probabilistic, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 1997.

An edited book

[1]

T.D. Gill, R. Geiß, R. Heinsch, T. McCormack, C. Paulussen, J. Dorsey, eds., Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 2013, T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J. Noble, R. Piddocke, D. Bakmand-Mikalski, Deploying the Search Center, in: R. Piddocke, D. Bakmand-Mikalski (Eds.), Pro SharePoint 2010 Search, Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2011: pp. 109–119.

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 Research Bulletin.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Meet Five Of The UK’s Most Poisonous Plants, IFLScience. (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-five-uk-s-most-poisonous-plants/ (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, Mass Transit: Historical Patterns and Future Outlook, 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]

R. Gallardo-Macias, Tin (II) compounds as novel catalysts for the Kabachnik-Fields reaction: Studies in the synthesis of alpha-aminophosphonates under solvent free conditions and Synthesis of phosphonates and phosphates as reversible and irreversible inhibitors of butyrylcholinesterase, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2009.

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]

S. Cowley, Tally of Suspect Accounts at Wells Fargo Grows by 1.4 Million, New York Times. (2017) B1.

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 Research Bulletin
Abbreviation	Mater. Res. Bull.
ISSN (print)	0025-5408
Scope	Mechanical Engineering Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Condensed Matter Physics