How to format your references using the Progress in Materials Science citation style

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

McGill BJ. Ecology. Matters of scale. Science 2010;328:575–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Towbin JA, Bowles NE. The failing heart. Nature 2002;415:227–33.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Springel V, Frenk CS, White SDM. The large-scale structure of the Universe. Nature 2006;440:1137–44.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Giraudo CG, Garcia-Diaz A, Eng WS, Chen Y, Hendrickson WA, Melia TJ, et al. Alternative zippering as an on-off switch for SNARE-mediated fusion. Science 2009;323:512–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Ben-Daya M, Kumar U, Murthy DNP. Introduction to Maintenance Engineering. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2016.

An edited book

[1]

Bourdin B. The Variational Approach to Fracture. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Luo J, Liu T, Liu Y. FT-NIR and Confocal Microscope Raman Spectroscopic Studies of Sesame Oil Adulteration. In: Li D, Chen Y, editors. Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture V: 5th IFIP TC 5/SIG 5.1 Conference, CCTA 2011, Beijing, China, October 29-31, 2011, Proceedings, Part II, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012, p. 24–31.

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 Progress in Materials Science.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. Why Poo Transplants Are Nothing To Be Sniffed At. IFLScience 2015.

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. Earth Observing System: Concerns Over NASA’s Basic Research Funding Strategy. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Park K-S. Transcriptional Regulation In The Respiratory Epithelium During Development And Repair. Doctoral dissertation. University of Cincinnati, 2006.

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]

Walsh MW. Treasury Official Urges Congress to Act Quickly on Puerto Rico. New York Times 2016:B3.

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	Progress in Materials Science
Abbreviation	Prog. Mater. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0079-6425
Scope	General Materials Science