How to format your references using the Nanoscale Research Letters citation style

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

Christensen PR (2003) Formation of recent martian gullies through melting of extensive water-rich snow deposits. Nature 422:45–48

A journal article with 2 authors

Smith NGC, Eyre-Walker A (2002) Adaptive protein evolution in Drosophila. Nature 415:1022–1024

A journal article with 3 authors

Smith DK, Cann JR, Escartín J (2006) Widespread active detachment faulting and core complex formation near 13 degrees N on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Nature 442:440–443

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Barluenga M, Stölting KN, Salzburger W, et al (2006) Sympatric speciation in Nicaraguan crater lake cichlid fish. Nature 439:719–723

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sharma YC (2011) A Guide to the Economic Removal of Metals from Aqueous Solutions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Leese P, Crouthamel J (2016) Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Venstermans K, Eeckhout L, De Bosschere K (2007) Object-Relative Addressing: Compressed Pointers in 64-Bit Java Virtual Machines. In: Ernst E (ed) ECOOP 2007 – Object-Oriented Programming: 21st European Conference, Berlin, Germany, July 30 - August 3, 2007. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 79–100

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 Nanoscale Research Letters.

Blog post

Andrews R (2016) Fearsome Dinosaur With Ludicrously Tiny Arms Means T. Rex Wasn’t Alone. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1994) Air Traffic Control: Observations on Proposed Corporation. 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

Gwaduri E (2009) A personal narrative: Struggles and experiences of acculturation as a Pakistani Shia Muslim while battling immigration. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Pilon M, Bernstein V (2013) Danger Lurks in Dirt Track Racing. New York Times B17

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	Nanoscale Research Letters
Abbreviation	Nanoscale Res. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1931-7573
ISSN (online)	1556-276X
Scope	General Materials Science Condensed Matter Physics