How to format your references using the Thin Solid Films citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Thin Solid Films. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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]

G.F. Joyce, Obituary: Leslie Orgel (1927-2007), Nature 450 (2007) 627.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

A. Timmermann, L. Menviel, Climate change. What drives climate flip-flops?, Science 325 (2009) 273–274.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M.C. Gregg, T.B. Sanford, D.P. Winkel, Reduced mixing from the breaking of internal waves in equatorial waters, Nature 422 (2003) 513–515.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P. Janata, J.L. Birk, J.D. Van Horn, M. Leman, B. Tillmann, J.J. Bharucha, The cortical topography of tonal structures underlying Western music, Science 298 (2002) 2167–2170.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. Evans, Seven Secrets of the Savvy School Leader, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2010.

An edited book

[1]

C. Walther, D.K. Gupta, eds., Radionuclides in the Environment: Influence of chemical speciation and plant uptake on radionuclide migration, 1st ed. 2015, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S. Coecke, C. Bernasconi, G. Bowe, A.-C. Bostroem, J. Burton, T. Cole, S. Fortaner, V. Gouliarmou, A. Gray, C. Griesinger, S. Louhimies, E.M. Gyves, E. Joossens, M.-J. Prinz, A. Milcamps, N. Parissis, I. Wilk-Zasadna, J. Barroso, B. Desprez, I. Langezaal, R. Liska, S. Morath, V. Reina, C. Zorzoli, V. Zuang, Practical Aspects of Designing and Conducting Validation Studies Involving Multi-study Trials, in: C. Eskes, M. Whelan (Eds.), Validation of Alternative Methods for Toxicity Testing, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016: pp. 133–163.

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 Thin Solid Films.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Old World Monkey Brains may Have Evolved Complexity Before Size, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/brain/old-world-monkey-brains-may-have-evolved-complexity-size/ (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, Block Grants Brought Funding Changes and Adjustments to Program Priorities, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1985.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

L.C. Davenport, Behavior and ecology of the Giant Otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) in oxbow lakes of the Manú Biosphere Reserve, Perú, Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2008.

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]

J. Poniewozik, A Hollywood Snub To a Celebrity in Chief, New York Times (2017) A16.

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	Thin Solid Films
Abbreviation	Thin Solid Films
ISSN (print)	0040-6090
Scope	Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Materials Chemistry Metals and Alloys Surfaces, Coatings and Films Surfaces and Interfaces