How to format your references using the Composites Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Composites Communications. 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 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]

M. Kirschner, Profile: Bruce Alberts, Science’s new editor, Science 319 (2008) 1199.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

T.F. Schultz, S.A. Kay, Circadian clocks in daily and seasonal control of development, Science 301 (2003) 326–328.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. Dornelas, S.R. Connolly, T.P. Hughes, Coral reef diversity refutes the neutral theory of biodiversity, Nature 440 (2006) 80–82.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

J.A. Kers, M.J. Wach, S.B. Krasnoff, J. Widom, K.D. Cameron, R.A. Bukhalid, D.M. Gibson, B.R. Crane, R. Loria, Nitration of a peptide phytotoxin by bacterial nitric oxide synthase, Nature 429 (2004) 79–82.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

C. Joseph, Advanced Credit Risk Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

M.L. Seeberg, E.M. Goździak, eds., Contested Childhoods: Growing up in Migrancy: Migration, Governance, Identities, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D.C. Slaughter, The Biological Engineer: Sensing the Difference Between Crops and Weeds, in: S.L. Young, F.J. Pierce (Eds.), Automation: The Future of Weed Control in Cropping Systems, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2014: pp. 71–95.

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 Composites Communications.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Australia’s Arid Interior Was Occupied Ten Thousand Years Earlier Than Suspected, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/australias-arid-interior-was-occupied-ten-thousand-years-earlier-than-suspected/ (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, Schools and Libraries Program: Application and Invoice Review Procedures Need Strengthening, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

R.D. Wood, Correlation of conductor leadership style, musician employment status, organizational participation to orchestra musician job satisfaction, Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 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]

A. Higgins, A.E. Kramer, The Soviet Union Died, but Russia’s Use of Sexual Blackmail Lives On, New York Times (2017) A20.

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	Composites Communications
ISSN (print)	2452-2139
Scope