How to format your references using the Mechanical Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mechanical Sciences. 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	Download the output style file
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

Bennett, V. C.: Geophysics. Probing the mantle past, Science, 335, 1051–1052, 2012.

A journal article with 2 authors

Waters, M. R. and Stafford, T. W., Jr: Redefining the age of Clovis: implications for the peopling of the Americas, Science, 315, 1122–1126, 2007.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gerke, J., Lorenz, K., and Cohen, B.: Genetic interactions between transcription factors cause natural variation in yeast, Science, 323, 498–501, 2009.

A journal article with 100 or more authors

Brar, G. A., Kiburz, B. M., Zhang, Y., Kim, J.-E., White, F., and Amon, A.: Rec8 phosphorylation and recombination promote the step-wise loss of cohesins in meiosis, Nature, 441, 532–536, 2006.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Unmehopa, M., Vemuri, K., and Bennett, A.: Parlay/OSA, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2006.

An edited book

Nguyen, T. B., van Do, T., An Le Thi, H., and Nguyen, N. T. (Eds.): Advanced Computational Methods for Knowledge Engineering: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Applications, ICCSAMA 2016, 2-3 May, 2016, Vienna, Austria, Springer International Publishing, Cham, XI, 296 p. 88 illus pp., 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Taibi, E.: A Framework for Technology Cooperation for the Successful Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies in Pacific Island Countries and Territories, in: Climate-Smart Technologies: Integrating Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Mitigation and Adaptation Responses, edited by: Leal Filho, W., Mannke, F., Mohee, R., Schulte, V., and Surroop, D., Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 65–74, 2013.

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 Mechanical Sciences.

Blog post

From Newton To Einstein: The Origins Of General Relativity: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/newton-einstein-origins-general-relativity/, last access: 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office: Maritime Critical Infrastructure Protection: DHS Needs to Better Address Port Cybersecurity, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2014.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hagarty, E. P.: A predictive risk modeling system for the management of small-scale water and wastewater facilities: Toward long-term sustainability of our national parks, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2008.

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

Kelly, M.: THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; CLINTON AND BUSH IN A SPRINT AS RACE FOR WHITE HOUSE ENDS, New York Times, 3rd November, A1, 1992.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Bennett, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Bennett, 2012; Waters and Stafford, 2007).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Waters and Stafford, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Brar et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Mechanical Sciences
Abbreviation	Mech. Sci.
ISSN (print)	2191-9151
ISSN (online)	2191-916X
Scope