How to format your references using the Applied Physics Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Applied Physics Letters. 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 M.J. Benton, “Evolution. How birds became birds,” Science 345(6196), 508–509 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

¹ A. Mogilner, and G. Oster, “Cell biology. Shrinking gels pull cells,” Science 302(5649), 1340–1341 (2003).

A journal article with 3 authors

¹ C.-A. Faucher-Giguère, A. Lidz, and L. Hernquist, “Numerical simulations unravel the cosmic web,” Science 319(5859), 52–55 (2008).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

¹ V. Torres, R. Ortuño, P. Rodríguez-Ulibarri, A. Griol, A. Martínez, M. Navarro-Cía, M. Beruete, and M. Sorolla, “Mid-infrared plasmonic inductors: enhancing inductance with meandering lines,” Sci. Rep. 4, 3592 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

¹ C.R. Hollin, The Psychology of Interpersonal Violence (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2016).

An edited book

¹ C. Blaschke, and H. Shatkay, editors , Linking Literature, Information, and Knowledge for Biology: Workshop of the BioLink Special Interest Group, ISMB/ECCB 2009, Stockholm, June 28-29, 2009, Revised Selected Papers (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010).

A chapter in an edited book

¹ D. McCown, D. Reibel, and M.S. Micozzi, “The Person of the Teacher,” in Teaching Mindfulness: A Practical Guide for Clinicians and Educators, edited by D. Reibel and M.S. Micozzi, (Springer, New York, NY, 2010), pp. 91–101.

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 Applied Physics Letters.

Blog post

¹ D. Andrew, “What Does ‘The Dark Side’ Of The Moon Look Like?,” 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, Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Readiness of the Oil and Gas Industries (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1999).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

¹ A.R. Lauper, Effects of Leadership Training and Networking Opportunities on Professional Advancement: A Quantitative Study, Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 2009.

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. Saslow, “13 Hospitals to Remove Trans Fats From Meals,” New York Times, LI2 (2006).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Applied Physics Letters
Abbreviation	Appl. Phys. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0003-6951
ISSN (online)	1077-3118
Scope	Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)