How to format your references using the Polymer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Polymer. 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]

R.G. Larson, Biophysics. Going with the flow, Science 318 (2007) 57–58.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R.M. Bruno, B. Sakmann, Cortex is driven by weak but synchronously active thalamocortical synapses, Science 312 (2006) 1622–1627.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

N. Suzuki, M. Nishiura, Y. Wakatsuki, Isolation and structural characterization of 1-zirconacyclopent-3-yne, five-membered cyclic alkynes, Science 295 (2002) 660–663.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P.D. Evans, S.L. Gilbert, N. Mekel-Bobrov, E.J. Vallender, J.R. Anderson, L.M. Vaez-Azizi, S.A. Tishkoff, R.R. Hudson, B.T. Lahn, Microcephalin, a gene regulating brain size, continues to evolve adaptively in humans, Science 309 (2005) 1717–1720.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Y. Shi, M. Liu, F. Fang, Combined Cooling, Heating, and Power Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2017.

An edited book

[1]

M. Zhao, The Boundary Theory of Phase Diagrams and Its Application: Rules for Phase Diagram Construction with Phase Regions and Their Boundaries, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J. Ramalho-Santos, A.S. Rodrigues, From Oocytes and Pluripotent Stem Cells to Fully Differentiated Fates: (Also) a Mitochondrial Odyssey, in: J.C. St. John (Ed.), Mitochondrial DNA, Mitochondria, Disease and Stem Cells, Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, 2013: pp. 69–86.

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 Polymer.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Comets You Can Spot This Month, IFLScience (2014).

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, Summer Youth Jobs Program: Congressional Action Has Increased Emphasis on Remedial Education, 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]

R. Carley, Evaluation of the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and hurricanes on wildfires in southeast Louisiana, Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, 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]

J.C. McKINLEY Jr., A. Southall, One Outlier as Homicides in City Decline Significantly, New York Times (2016) A19.

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	Polymer
Abbreviation	Polymer (Guildf.)
ISSN (print)	0032-3861
Scope	Organic Chemistry Polymers and Plastics