How to format your references using the Progress in Natural Science: Materials International citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Progress in Natural Science: Materials International. 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]

R. Pielke Jr, Who has the ear of the president?, Nature 450 (2007) 347–348.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Fisher, R. Costanza, Environmental policy: regional commitment to reducing emissions, Nature 438 (2005) 301–302.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A.B. Ward, A. Sali, I.A. Wilson, Biochemistry. Integrative structural biology, Science 339 (2013) 913–915.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A. Chambouvet, P. Morin, D. Marie, L. Guillou, Control of toxic marine dinoflagellate blooms by serial parasitic killers, Science 322 (2008) 1254–1257.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A. Warren, Dunes, John Wiley & Sons, Oxford, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

F. Piazolo, M. Felderer, eds., Innovation and Future of Enterprise Information Systems: ERP Future 2012 Conference, Salzburg, Austria, November 2012, Revised Papers, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M. Boadu, Ethical Dimensions of Corporate Governance Practice in Ghana: Developing a Theoretical Perspective, in: K.E. Howell, M.K. Sorour (Eds.), Corporate Governance in Africa: Assessing Implementation and Ethical Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, 2016: pp. 97–130.

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 Progress in Natural Science: Materials International.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, ‘Asian Unicorn’ Seen In Vietnam For The First Time In Fifteen Years, IFLScience (2013). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/‘asian-unicorn’-seen-vietnam-first-time-fifteen-years/ (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, Higher Education: Improved Tax Information Could Help Pay for College, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2012.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

N.A. Gillan-Sanderson, A Study of the Effect of Additional Reading Assistance on Student Achievement, Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2012.

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. Schwartz, T. Schlossberg, Little Debating a Climate Divide, New York Times (2016) D5.

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	Progress in Natural Science: Materials International
ISSN (print)	1002-0071
Scope