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

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

S. Blinkhorn, Yes, but what’s it for?, Nature 412 (2001) 771.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J. Gaudet, S.E. Mango, Regulation of organogenesis by the Caenorhabditis elegans FoxA protein PHA-4, Science 295 (2002) 821–825.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P.D.W. Kirk, A.C. Babtie, M.P.H. Stumpf, SYSTEMS BIOLOGY. Systems biology (un)certainties, Science 350 (2015) 386–388.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H.J. Kim, J.S. Jeong, S.R. Kim, S.Y. Park, H.J. Chae, Y.C. Lee, Inhibition of endoplasmic reticulum stress alleviates lipopolysaccharide-induced lung inflammation through modulation of NF-κB/HIF-1α signaling pathway, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 1142.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A.B. Rubin, Fundamentals of Biophysics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

F. Fitzal, P. Schrenk, eds., Oncoplastic Breast Surgery: A Guide to Clinical Practice, Springer, Vienna, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

B. Christenson, F. Tassi, Gases in Volcanic Lake Environments, in: D. Rouwet, B. Christenson, F. Tassi, J. Vandemeulebrouck (Eds.), Volcanic Lakes, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015: pp. 125–153.

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 Chemical Physics Letters.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Mouse Lemurs Reveal Tale Of Madagascar’s Forests, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mouse-lemurs-reveal-tale-of-madagascars-forests/ (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, Financial Audit: The Federal Communications Commission’s Fiscal Year 2004 Management Representation Letter on Its Financial Statements, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C.P. Steiner, Three essays in applied microeconomics, Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, 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]

M. Schuman, Fresh Worries in an Old Problem for the Global Market: Rising Debt in China, New York Times (2017) B6.

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	Chemical Physics Letters
Abbreviation	Chem. Phys. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0009-2614
Scope	Physical and Theoretical Chemistry General Physics and Astronomy