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 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 P.H. von Hippel, “Biochemistry. Completing the view of transcriptional regulation,” Science 305(5682), 350–352 (2004).

A journal article with 2 authors

¹ M. Scanziani, and M. Häusser, “Electrophysiology in the age of light,” Nature 461(7266), 930–939 (2009).

A journal article with 3 authors

¹ I. Ben-Ami Bartal, J. Decety, and P. Mason, “Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats,” Science 334(6061), 1427–1430 (2011).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

¹ R.-Q. Su, Y.-C. Lai, X. Wang, and Y. Do, “Uncovering hidden nodes in complex networks in the presence of noise,” Sci. Rep. 4, 3944 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

¹ Center for Chemical Process Safety, A Practical Approach to Hazard Identification for Operations and Maintenance Workers (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2010).

An edited book

¹ L. Capogna, Fully Nonlinear PDEs in Real and Complex Geometry and Optics: Cetraro, Italy 2012, Editors: Cristian E. Gutiérrez, Ermanno Lanconelli (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2014).

A chapter in an edited book

¹ G. Subbiahdoss, J.F. da Silva Domingues, R. Kuijer, H.C. van der Mei, and H.J. Busscher, “Bridging the Gap Between In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation of Biomaterial-Associated Infections,” in Biomaterials Associated Infection: Immunological Aspects and Antimicrobial Strategies, edited by T.F. Moriarty, S.A.J. Zaat, and H.J. Busscher, (Springer, New York, NY, 2013), pp. 107–117.

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 R. Andrews, “NASA Is Setting Up A Solar System-Wide Internet Connection,” IFLScience, (2016).

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, Serious Problems Continue to Trouble the Air Traffic Control Work Force (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1989).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

¹ K.M. Coleman, Parent Involvement in the Promotion of Healthy Outcomes for Young Girls: A Grant Writing Project, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2015.

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 G. Johnson, “Science, Lost in a Legal Maze,” New York Times, D3 (2015).

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)