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

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

[1]

M.S. Lozier, Deconstructing the conveyor belt, Science 328 (2010) 1507–1511.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.R. Peck, D. Waxman, Mutation and sex in a competitive world, Nature 406 (2000) 399–404.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. Skipper, R. Dhand, P. Campbell, Presenting ENCODE, Nature 489 (2012) 45.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

R. Madueno, M.T. Räisänen, C. Silien, M. Buck, Functionalizing hydrogen-bonded surface networks with self-assembled monolayers, Nature 454 (2008) 618–621.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

L. Hanzo, T. Keller, OFDM and MC-CDMA, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2006.

An edited book

[1]

S. Siegesmund, R. Snethlage, eds., Stone in Architecture: Properties, Durability, 5th ed. 2014, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

V. Laurence, C. Rousset-Jablonski, Contraception and Cancer Treatment in Young Persons, in: G.P. Quinn, S.T. Vadaparampil (Eds.), Reproductive Health and Cancer in Adolescents and Young Adults, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2012: pp. 41–60.

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 Natural Science: Materials International.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Million-year-old Footprints in Britain May Alter “Out of Africa” Timeline, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/million-year-old-footprints-britain-may-alter-“out-africa”-timeline/ (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, Intellectual Property: Risk and Enforcement Challenges, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

R.C. Hausmann, Organizing Ecosystems for Social Innovation: The Relationality of Contexts and Mechanisms in a Social Entrepreneurship Network, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 2015.

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]

G. Vecsey, Old Pro Matsui Comes Through At the New Park, New York Times (2009) B12.

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 Natural Science: Materials International
ISSN (print)	1002-0071
Scope