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

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

Mignot E. Physiology. The perfect hypnotic? Science. 2013;340(6128):36–38.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Hoegh-Guldberg O, Bruno JF. The impact of climate change on the world’s marine ecosystems. Science. 2010;328(5985):1523–1528.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Vais H, Foskett JK, Mak D-OD. InsP3R channel gating altered by clustering? Nature. 2011;478(7368):E1-2; discussion E2-3.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Ogawa N, Hoshisashi K, Sekiguchi H, et al. Tracking 3D picometer-scale motions of single nanoparticles with high-energy electron probes. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2201.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Early WF II. Contractor and Client Relations to Assure Process Safety. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

[1]

Hamer C. Learn Blackberry Games Development. Davison A, editor. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Stranahan AM, Mattson MP. Stress Hormones and Neuroplasticity in the Diabetic Brain. In: Craft S, Christen Y, editors. Diabetes, Insulin and Alzheimer’s Disease. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 57–71.

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 Letters.

Blog post

[1]

Andrews R. Study Reveals Why We All Love People That Are Bad For Us [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/pathological-deviant-people-have-greater-sex-appeal/.

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. Development of Nontactical Secure Voice Systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1978. Report No.: LCD-78-129-II. .

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Duerr PS. Investigation of marine waterjet inlets during turning maneuvers [Doctoral dissertation]. [Boca Raton, FL]: Florida Atlantic University; 2015.

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]

Herrman J. Fixation on Fake News Obscures a Waning Trust in Real Reporting. New York Times. 2016 Nov 19;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 Letters
Abbreviation	Mater. Res. Lett.
ISSN (online)	2166-3831
Scope