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]

Hambley TW. Chemistry. Metal-based therapeutics. Science. 2007;318:1392–1393.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Remondes M, Schuman EM. Role for a cortical input to hippocampal area CA1 in the consolidation of a long-term memory. Nature. 2004;431:699–703.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Kobayashi K, Yoshimura J, Hasegawa E. Coexistence of sexual individuals and genetically isolated asexual counterparts in a thrips. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3286.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Thon M, Hosoi T, Yoshii M, et al. Leptin induced GRP78 expression through the PI3K-mTOR pathway in neuronal cells. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7096.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Knuth E. Trading Between the Lines. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

[1]

Novick AC, Stephen Jones J, Gill IS, et al., editors. Operative Urology at the Cleveland Clinic. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Chen H, Zeng D, Yan P. Data Analysis and Outbreak Detection. In: Zeng D, Yan P, editors. Infectious Disease Informatics: Syndromic Surveillance for Public Health and BioDefense. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2010. p. 49–72.

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]

Carpineti C. Check Out These Incredible Videos Of A Star Exploding [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/check-out-these-incredible-videos-of-a-star-exploding/.

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. Managers Need To Provide Better Protection for Federal Automatic Data Processing Facilities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976. Report No.: FGMSD-76-40. .

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Stoltzfus KM. The relationship between teachers’ training transfer and their perceptions of principal leadership style [Doctoral dissertation]. [Tucson, AZ]: University of Arizona; 2010.

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]

Hartocollis A. Latest Economic Lifeline Is a Leafy One. New York Times. 2015 Jun 1;A14.

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

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