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

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

Basnyat B 2015 Tackle Nepal’s typhoid problem now Nature 524 267

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Bavelier D and Davidson R J 2013 Brain training: Games to do you good Nature 494 425–6

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Chen J, Weidner D J and Vaughan M T 2002 The strength of Mg(0.9)Fe(0.1)SiO3 perovskite at high pressure and temperature Nature 419 824–6

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Gu C, Zhang X, Jiang J, Guan Z, Zhao S, Fang W, Liao Y, Chen S and Chen F 2014 Chrysanthemum CmNAR2 interacts with CmNRT2 in the control of nitrate uptake Sci. Rep. 4 5833

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Kim D M 2015 Introductory Quantum Mechanics for Applied Nanotechnology (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA)

An edited book

[1]

Lu D 2010 Digital Preservation for Heritages: Technologies and Applications ed Y Pan (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Cavapozzi D, Fiume A, Garrouste C and Weber G 2011 Human Capital Accumulation and Investment Behaviour The Individual and the Welfare State: Life Histories in Europe ed A Börsch-Supan, M Brandt, K Hank and M Schröder (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer) pp 45–57

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 Letters.

Blog post

[1]

O`Callaghan J 2015 New Type Of Mid-Sized Black Hole Found 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 1977 Energy Research and Development Administration’s Accounting System for Accounts Receivable (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]

Burgner J 2010 Bullying prevention: A grant proposal Doctoral dissertation (Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach)

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]

Billard M 2010 A New Bag, A New Space New York Times E9

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 Letters
Abbreviation	Chin. Physics Lett.
ISSN (print)	0256-307X
ISSN (online)	1741-3540
Scope	General Physics and Astronomy