How to format your references using the Materials Today Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Materials Today 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]

G. Yellen, The voltage-gated potassium channels and their relatives, Nature 419 (2002) 35–42.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J. Di Domizio, M. Gilliet, SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY. Designer cells finely tuned for therapy, Science 350 (2015) 1478–1479.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

R.D. Kolodner, C.D. Putnam, K. Myung, Maintenance of genome stability in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Science 297 (2002) 552–557.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

C. Pfleiderer, P. Böni, T. Keller, U.K. Rössler, A. Rosch, Non-Fermi liquid metal without quantum criticality, Science 316 (2007) 1871–1874.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

N.H. Demand, The Mediterranean Context of Early Greek History, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 2011.

An edited book

[1]

C.A. Guzmán, G.Z. Feuerstein, eds., Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Springer, New York, NY, 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M.A. Lewis, S.V. Petrovskii, J.R. Potts, Long-Distance Dispersal and Spread, in: S.V. Petrovskii, J.R. Potts (Eds.), The Mathematics Behind Biological Invasions, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016: pp. 155–193.

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 Materials Today Communications.

Blog post

[1]

A. Carpineti, Russia And Europe Collaborate On A Joint Mission To The Moon, 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, Civil Space: NASA’s Strategic Planning Process, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. Grace, A Correlational Study of the Relationship Between TEAS V and Success in Licensed Practical Nursing Students, Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 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]

L. Yablonsky, Art and Action, New York Times (2010) M242.

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	Materials Today Communications
Abbreviation	Mater. Today Commun.
ISSN (print)	2352-4928
Scope	Mechanics of Materials General Materials Science Materials Chemistry