How to format your references using the Surface Science Reports citation style

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

P. Szyszka, Ecology. Follow the odor, Science. 344 (2014) 1454.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

M. Murakami, T. Kouyama, Crystal structure of squid rhodopsin, Nature. 453 (2008) 363–367.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

B.S. Halpern, K. Cottenie, B.R. Broitman, Strong top-down control in southern California kelp forest ecosystems, Science. 312 (2006) 1230–1232.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

M.C. Morris, P. Kaiser, S. Rudyak, C. Baskerville, M.H. Watson, S.I. Reed, Cks1-dependent proteasome recruitment and activation of CDC20 transcription in budding yeast, Nature. 423 (2003) 1009–1013.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

L. Harte, Reading the Contemporary Irish Novel 1987-2007, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

E. Cancès, Méthodes mathématiques en chimie quantique Une introduction, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J. Gilmore, P.N. Howard, Digital Media and the 2010 National Elections in Brazil, in: B. Grofman, A.H. Trechsel, M. Franklin (Eds.), The Internet and Democracy in Global Perspective: Voters, Candidates, Parties, and Social Movements, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014: pp. 43–55.

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 Surface Science Reports.

Blog post

[1]

D. Andrew, How Our Autistic Ancestors Played An Important Role In Human Evolution, IFLScience. (2017).

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, Job Training Partnership Act: Summer Youth Programs Increase Emphasis on Education, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C.T. Le, Academic performance of college students as related to depression from stress, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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]

B. Hubbard, E. Lipton, D. Levin, R.C. Paddock, With Glitzy Openings in Dubai and Vancouver, Trump’s Roles Collide, New York Times. (2017) A12.

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	Surface Science Reports
Abbreviation	Surf. Sci. Rep.
ISSN (print)	0167-5729
Scope	Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Materials Chemistry Metals and Alloys Surfaces, Coatings and Films Condensed Matter Physics Surfaces and Interfaces