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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Hedin, L. O.: Retrospective. F. Herbert Bormann (1922-2012), Science, 337, 534, 2012.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, X. and Xu, J.: Meta-analysis of the association between dietary lycopene intake and ovarian cancer risk in postmenopausal women, Sci. Rep., 4, 4885, 2014.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kim, H.-J., Lee, J.-H., and Cho, J.-H.: Antiferromagnetic Slater insulator phase of Na₂IrO₃, Sci. Rep., 4, 5253, 2014.

A journal article with 100 or more authors

Bevilacqua, L., Doly, S., Kaprio, J., Yuan, Q., Tikkanen, R., Paunio, T., Zhou, Z., Wedenoja, J., Maroteaux, L., Diaz, S., Belmer, A., Hodgkinson, C. A., Dell’osso, L., Suvisaari, J., Coccaro, E., Rose, R. J., Peltonen, L., Virkkunen, M., and Goldman, D.: A population-specific HTR2B stop codon predisposes to severe impulsivity, Nature, 468, 1061–1066, 2010.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Trout, J. and Rivkin, S.: Differentiate or Die, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2008.

An edited book

Beckert, M.: Effects of Herbicide-Tolerant Crop Cultivation: Investigating the Durability of a Weed Management Tool, edited by: Dessaux, Y., Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, XXI, 146 p. 19 illus., 16 illus. in color p., 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Duband, J.-L.: Neural Crest Delamination and Migration, in: Neural Crest Induction and Differentiation, edited by: Saint-Jeannet, J.-P., Springer US, Boston, MA, 45–77, 2006.

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

Hale, T.: Someone Has Rewritten “Fifty Shades Of Grey” For Geeks, And It’s Absolutely Hilarious, https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/twitter-accounts-rewrites-fifty-shades-grey-geeks/, last access: 30 October 2018, 2016., 2016.

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: Federal Research: Interim Report on the Pilot Technology Access Program, RCED-94-75, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Turkel, C. C.: Female leaders’ 360-degree self -perception accuracy for leadership competencies and skills, Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN, 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

Herrman, J.: The Land of Internet Subcultures, , New York Times12th AugustA2, 2017.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hedin, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Hedin, 2012; Li and Xu, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Li and Xu, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Bevilacqua et al., 2010)

About the journal

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