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]

T. Lincoln, Animal behaviour: Greensleaves, Nature 410 (2001) 318.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R.J. White, M. Averner, Humans in space, Nature 409 (2001) 1115–1118.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

T.S. Hnasko, B.N. Sotak, R.D. Palmiter, Morphine reward in dopamine-deficient mice, Nature 438 (2005) 854–857.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

N.B.D. Lima, S.M.C. Gonçalves, S.A. Júnior, A.M. Simas, A comprehensive strategy to boost the quantum yield of luminescence of europium complexes, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 2395.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Y. Pan, J. Wang, M. Li, Algorithmic and Artificial Intelligence Methods for Protein Bioinformatics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

M. Balliauw, Pro NuGet, Second Edition, Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

T.J. Cleophas, A.H. Zwinderman, Log Likelihood Ratio Tests for Safety Data Analysis, in: A.H. Zwinderman (Ed.), Statistics Applied to Clinical Studies, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2012: pp. 61–68.

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]

B. Taub, New Alzheimer’s Drug Could Be The Breakthrough We’ve Been Waiting For, IFLScience (2016).

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, Review of Claims Settlement, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1973.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

L. Hansell, Perceptions of Supervisor Ethical Behavior by Psychology Interns, Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 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

[1]

K. Belson, B. Shpigel, Supersized Payback Is in Sight, New York Times (2017) SP1.

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