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]

N. Bonesteel, Composite fermions pair up, Nature. 406 (2000) 840–841.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B.B. Zhou, S.J. Elledge, The DNA damage response: putting checkpoints in perspective, Nature. 408 (2000) 433–439.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P. Khan, H. Jain, K.V. Adarsh, Role of Ge:As ratio in controlling the light-induced response of a-Ge(x)As(35-x)Se65 thin films, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4029.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

S. Herzig, S. Hedrick, I. Morantte, S.-H. Koo, F. Galimi, M. Montminy, CREB controls hepatic lipid metabolism through nuclear hormone receptor PPAR-gamma, Nature. 426 (2003) 190–193.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J. Vanclef, The Wealth Code 2.0, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

S.G. Davison, Green-Function Theory of Chemisorption, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

P. Spitzer, S. Wunderli, K. Maksymiuk, A. Michalska, A. Kisiel, Z. Galus, G. Tauber, Reference Electrodes for Aqueous Solutions, in: G. Inzelt, A. Lewenstam, F. Scholz (Eds.), Handbook of Reference Electrodes, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013: pp. 77–143.

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]

E. Andrew, This Amazing Test Could Detect ANY Virus In A Patient’s Blood, 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, Space Acquisitions: DOD Is Overcoming Long-Standing Problems, but Faces Challenges to Ensuring Its Investments Are Optimized, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

A.M. Martinez, Moving in foster care: Voices of adults who experienced multiple foster care placements in childhood, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2010.

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]

S.M. Novick, Shoppers Are Getting a Culinary Lift, New York Times. (2014) LI9.

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

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