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

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

Yin Q-Z 2004 Planetary science. Predicting the Sun’s oxygen isotope composition Science 305 1729–30

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Deng M and Hochstrasser M 2006 Spatially regulated ubiquitin ligation by an ER/nuclear membrane ligase Nature 443 827–31

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Zhang Z, Shibahara K and Stillman B 2000 PCNA connects DNA replication to epigenetic inheritance in yeast Nature 408 221–5

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Kohyama M, Ise W, Edelson B T, Wilker P R, Hildner K, Mejia C, Frazier W A, Murphy T L and Murphy K M 2009 Role for Spi-C in the development of red pulp macrophages and splenic iron homeostasis Nature 457 318–21

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Mitola J III 2002 Software Radio Architecture (New York, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Hirschfeld J W P 2016 General Galois Geometries ed J A Thas (London: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Purwaningrum F 2016 Shifting Practices of Academia as an Entrepreneurial OrganizationEntrepreneurial Organization in Indonesia Scientific Knowledge and the Transgression of Boundaries ed B-J Krings, H Rodríguez and A Schleisiek (Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden) pp 103–32

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 Express.

Blog post

[1]

Andrews R 2015 Ebola Confirmed To Be Sexually Transmitted Disease IFLScience

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 2009 Public Transportation: Better Data Needed to Assess Length of New Starts Process, and Options Exist to Expedite Project Development (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Warren J S 2012 Trust in immediate supervisor, trust in top management, organizational trust precursors: Predictors of organizational effectiveness Doctoral dissertation (Phoenix, AZ: University of Phoenix)

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]

Crow K 2001 Plan for a Bryant Park Carousel Comes Around Yet Again New York Times 144

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 Express
ISSN (online)	2053-1591
Scope