How to format your references using the Materials Today Bio citation style

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

M.D. Schneider, Development. A cardiac nonproliferation treaty, Science 332 (2011) 426–427.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

G. Scita, P.P. Di Fiore, The endocytic matrix, Nature 463 (2010) 464–473.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P. Allard, M. Burton, F. Muré, Spectroscopic evidence for a lava fountain driven by previously accumulated magmatic gas, Nature 433 (2005) 407–410.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

J.G. Wynn, Z. Alemseged, R. Bobe, D. Geraads, D. Reed, D.C. Roman, Geological and palaeontological context of a Pliocene juvenile hominin at Dikika, Ethiopia, Nature 443 (2006) 332–336.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. Blackford, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

Y. Tang, Dynamic-Mismatch Mapping for Digitally-Assisted DACs, Springer, New York, NY, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D. Hawkes, J. Kennell, P. Booth, E. Abson, The Impact of Motivation Factors on Spending at a Public Sector Festivals Programme, in: Á. Matias, P. Nijkamp, J. Romão (Eds.), Impact Assessment in Tourism Economics, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016: pp. 67–80.

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 Today Bio.

Blog post

[1]

A. Carpineti, Scientists Discover 100 New Potential Exoplanets But Need Your Help To Find More, IFLScience (2017). https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-discover-100-new-potential-exoplanets-but-need-your-help-to-find-more/ (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, Aviation Safety: Progress on FAA Safety Indicators Program Slow and Challenges Remain, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

K.W. Talice, An Assessment of Veterans Affairs Healthcare Leadership Competencies, Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, 2017.

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. Kishkovsky, Governor Backs Pardoning Russian Who Killed Chechen Woman, New York Times (2004) A5.

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 Today Bio
ISSN (print)	2590-0064
Scope