How to format your references using the Polymers citation style

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

Service, R.F. Structural Biology. Protein Structure Initiative: Phase 3 or Phase Out. Science 2008, 319, 1610–1613.

A journal article with 2 authors

Koyama, K.; Takemoto, S. Morning Reduction of Photosynthetic Capacity before Midday Depression. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 4389.

A journal article with 3 authors

Johnson, C.H.; Egli, M.; Stewart, P.L. Structural Insights into a Circadian Oscillator. Science 2008, 322, 697–701.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wang, Z.; Ying, P.; Li, P.; Zhang, D.; Huang, H.; Tian, H.; Zhang, Y. Switching Suppression and Enhancement of Fluorescence and Six-Wave Mixing by Phase Modulation. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 3417.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ancheyta, J. Modeling and Simulation of Catalytic Reactors for Petroleum Refining; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2011; ISBN 9780470933565.

An edited book

Dan Shen (Salvia Miltiorrhiza) in Medicine: Volume 1. Biology and Chemistry; Yan, X., Ed.; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2015; ISBN 9789401794688.

A chapter in an edited book

McMurtry, J.A.; Sourassou, N.F.; Demite, P.R. The Phytoseiidae (Acari: Mesostigmata) as Biological Control Agents. In Prospects for Biological Control of Plant Feeding Mites and Other Harmful Organisms; Carrillo, D., de Moraes, G.J., Peña, J.E., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; pp. 133–149 ISBN 9783319150413.

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 Polymers.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Powering Nanotechnology With The World’s Smallest Engine (accessed on 30 October 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 Transportation Security Administration’s Office of Intelligence: Responses to Posthearing Questions Regarding Secure Flight; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2006;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Samble, J.N. Persistence and Advancement in NCAA Division I: Lived Experiences of Female Athletic Administrators. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University: Bloomington, IN, 2017.

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

Davey, M. Michigan Governor Asks State Lawmakers to Provide $350 Million for Detroit. New York Times 2014, A15.

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	Polymers
Abbreviation	Polymers (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2073-4360
Scope