How to format your references using the Mechanics Research Communications citation style

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

[1]

J.V. Weinstock, Autoimmunity: The worm returns, Nature 491 (2012) 183–185.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Y. Neuman, Y. Cohen, A vectorial semantics approach to personality assessment, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4761.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

K.D. Kavanagh, A.R. Evans, J. Jernvall, Predicting evolutionary patterns of mammalian teeth from development, Nature 449 (2007) 427–432.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

C. Dostert, V. Pétrilli, R. Van Bruggen, C. Steele, B.T. Mossman, J. Tschopp, Innate immune activation through Nalp3 inflammasome sensing of asbestos and silica, Science 320 (2008) 674–677.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

W. Ruppel, GAAP for Governments 2014, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

G. Herrmann, M. Studley, M. Pearson, A. Conn, C. Melhuish, M. Witkowski, J.-H. Kim, P. Vadakkepat, eds., Advances in Autonomous Robotics: Joint Proceedings of the 13th Annual TAROS Conference and the 15th Annual FIRA RoboWorld Congress, Bristol, UK, August 20-23, 2012, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D. Fabrègue, C. Landron, C. Béal, X. Kleber, E. Maire, M. Bouzekri, Understanding the mechanical behaviour of a high manganese TWIP steel by the means of in situ 3D X ray tomography, in: T. Proulx (Ed.), Optical Measurements, Modeling, and Metrology, Volume 5: Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Experimental and Applied Mechanics, Springer, New York, NY, 2011: pp. 27–32.

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 Research Communications.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, These Cute Slugs Are The Bunnies Of The Sea, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/these-cute-slugs-are-actual-bunnies-sea/ (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, National Aero-Space Plane: A Technology Development and Demonstration Program To Build the X-30, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. Chahine, Social workers’ perceptions of individuals who use drugs and alcohol problematically, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2013.

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]

R. Lyman, M.W. Walsh, Police Salaries and Pensions Push California City to Brink, New York Times (2013) A1.

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	Mechanics Research Communications
Abbreviation	Mech. Res. Commun.
ISSN (print)	0093-6413
Scope	Civil and Structural Engineering Mechanical Engineering Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Condensed Matter Physics