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

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

S. Nadis, Brookhaven collider opens its quest for Big Bang conditions, Nature 405 (2000) 874.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

M.R. Stahley, S.A. Strobel, Structural evidence for a two-metal-ion mechanism of group I intron splicing, Science 309 (2005) 1587–1590.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

S. Husale, H.H.J. Persson, O. Sahin, DNA nanomechanics allows direct digital detection of complementary DNA and microRNA targets, Nature 462 (2009) 1075–1078.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P. Pandur, M. Läsche, L.M. Eisenberg, M. Kühl, Wnt-11 activation of a non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway is required for cardiogenesis, Nature 418 (2002) 636–641.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A. Johnson, Small Animal Pathology for Veterinary Technicians, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

J.J. (jong H. Park, A. Zomaya, H.-Y. Jeong, M. Obaidat, eds., Frontier and Innovation in Future Computing and Communications, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

K. Sammet, D. Bergelt, The Modernisation of Gender Relations and Religion: Comparative Analysis of Secularization Processes, in: G. Pickel, K. Sammet (Eds.), Transformations of Religiosity: Religion and Religiosity in Eastern Europe 1989 – 2010, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 2012: pp. 51–68.

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 Communications.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, NASA Wants to Send an Airplane to Mars, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/technology/first-mars-airplane/ (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, Space Acquisitions: Space Based Infrared System Could Benefit from Technology Insertion Planning, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

K. Williams, Riot Bias: A Textual Analysis of Pussy Riot’s Coverage in Russian and American Media, Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2014.

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]

J. Hanc, Flattery Will Get You Everywhere, New York Times (2016) F2.

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 Communications
Abbreviation	Mater. Today Commun.
ISSN (print)	2352-4928
Scope	Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Materials Chemistry