How to format your references using the Mechanics of Materials citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mechanics of Materials. 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

McLean, A.R., 2013. Epidemiology. Coming to an airport near you. Science 342, 1330–1331.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gronewold, A.D., Stow, C.A., 2014. Environment. Water loss from the Great Lakes. Science 343, 1084–1085.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ju, S.-Y., Kopcha, W.P., Papadimitrakopoulos, F., 2009. Brightly fluorescent single-walled carbon nanotubes via an oxygen-excluding surfactant organization. Science 323, 1319–1323.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Dodd, D., Spitzer, M.H., Van Treuren, W., Merrill, B.D., Hryckowian, A.J., Higginbottom, S.K., Le, A., Cowan, T.M., Nolan, G.P., Fischbach, M.A., Sonnenburg, J.L., 2017. A gut bacterial pathway metabolizes aromatic amino acids into nine circulating metabolites. Nature 551, 648–652.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stacey, W.M., 2012. Fusion Plasma Physics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Devonshire-Ellis, C., Scott, A., Woollard, S. (Eds.), 2011. Setting Up Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprises in China, China Briefing, The Practical Application of China Business. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Lauro, A., 2016. Suspect Cities and the (Re)Making of Colonial Order: Urbanization, Security Anxieties and Police Reforms in Postwar Congo (1945–1960), in: Campion, J., Rousseaux, X. (Eds.), Policing New Risks in Modern European History. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, pp. 57–85.

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 Mechanics of Materials.

Blog post

Hale, T., 2017. Zelda The Ferret Receives A Pacemaker [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/zelda-the-ferret-receives-a-pacemaker/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1999. Federal Communications Commission: Review of the Commission’s Regulations Governing Attribution Ownership Rule (No. OGC-00-1). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Travis, M.J., 2008. The relationship between a connections math class and math Criterion Referenced Competency Test scores (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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., 1993. CLINTON CANCELS BAIRD NOMINATION FOR JUSTICE DEPT. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McLean, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Gronewold and Stow, 2014; McLean, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Gronewold and Stow, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Dodd et al., 2017)

About the journal

Full journal title	Mechanics of Materials
Abbreviation	Mech. Mater.
ISSN (print)	0167-6636
Scope	Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Instrumentation