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]

N.P. Jacob, IBI* series winner. Investigating Arabia Mountain: a molecular approach, Science. 335 (2012) 1588–1589.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.T.P. Yeeles, K.J. Marians, The Escherichia coli replisome is inherently DNA damage tolerant, Science. 334 (2011) 235–238.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A.M. Wilson, J.C. Watson, G.A. Lichtwark, Biomechanics: A catapult action for rapid limb protraction, Nature. 421 (2003) 35–36.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A. Tashiro, V.M. Sandler, N. Toni, C. Zhao, F.H. Gage, NMDA-receptor-mediated, cell-specific integration of new neurons in adult dentate gyrus, Nature. 442 (2006) 929–933.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A.C.M. Fong, S.C. Hui, Multimedia Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, England, 2006.

An edited book

[1]

T. Aalberg, C. Papatheodorou, M. Dobreva, G. Tsakonas, C.J. Farrugia, eds., Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries: International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, TPDL 2013, Valletta, Malta, September 22-26, 2013. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

L.P. Cheng, Developing Critical Reflection Through Audio and Video Technology for Some Singapore Primary School Mathematics Teachers, in: S.F. Ng (Ed.), Cases of Mathematics Professional Development in East Asian Countries: Using Video to Support Grounded Analysis, Springer, Singapore, 2015: pp. 39–60.

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, How Re-Analysing The Data Of Scientific Research Can Change The Findings, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/how-re-analysing-data-scientific-research-can-change-findings/ (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, GAO Role in the Evaluation of Federally Funded Education Programs, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1972.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

G.C. Egan, Understanding the reaction mechanism of aluminum nanocomposite thermites, Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 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]

M.J. de la MERCED, Oscar Health and Humana Team Up in Small-Firm Venture, New York Times. (2017) B3.

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