How to format your references using the Chinese Physics C citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Chinese Physics C. 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 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]

Geden O 2015 Policy: Climate advisers must maintain integrity Nature 521 27–8

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Morata G and Ballesteros-Arias L 2014 Developmental Biology. Death to the losers Science 346 1181–2

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

DeBose J L, Lema S C and Nevitt G A 2008 Dimethylsulfoniopropionate as a foraging cue for reef fishes Science 319 1356

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Nakanishi Y, Lu B, Gerard C and Iwasaki A 2009 CD8(+) T lymphocyte mobilization to virus-infected tissue requires CD4(+) T-cell help Nature 462 510–3

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Brown M and Cutler T J 2012 Haematology Nursing (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

An edited book

[1]

Shahbazyan T V and Stockman M I 2013 Plasmonics: Theory and Applications vol 15 (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Derrick J and Boiten E A 2014 Calculating Refinements Refinement in Z and Object-Z: Foundations and Advanced Applications ed E A Boiten (London: Springer) pp 129–50

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 Chinese Physics C.

Blog post

[1]

Hale T 2017 Just A Small Number Of Driverless Cars On The Highway Could Slash Traffic Jams IFLScience

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 1995 Guaranteed Student Loans: Actions to Ensure Continued Student Access to Subsidized Loans (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Cervantes-Kelly M D 2010 Translation and interpretation as a means to improve bilingual high school students’ English and Spanish academic language proficiency Doctoral dissertation (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona)

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]

St. John Kelly E 1997 And Something for Your Dog as Well? New York Times 144

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	Chinese Physics C
ISSN (print)	1674-1137
Scope	Astronomy and Astrophysics Instrumentation Nuclear and High Energy Physics